On July 11, Navy veteran, former auditor, founder of Rotary International’s Carbondale chapter and iconic KDNK DJ Art Ackerman will celebrate his 100th birthday with family and friends. Ackerman has been on KDNK’s airwaves since 1987 hosting a myriad of jazz with his popular weekly show “Swing, Swing, Swing,” every Tuesday from 7 to 9pm. Two of his grandchildren, J.R. and Georgia, now help out, sharing history and occasionally covering the show to maintain that music as a part of our community’s zeitgeist.
“I feel really lucky to have grown up here and have a wonderful grandfather who raised a great family. He’s got five kids, eleven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren,” Georgia said. “The opportunity to be on KDNK is wonderful. I’ve always had that opportunity living here, and it’s so open and inviting, but I probably wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for him. To be able to have our voices on the air is pretty incredible.”
Having spent his infancy in the height of the Great Depression in Detroit, Michigan, Ackerman said his family actively moved over several years to stay afloat. “We moved from Detroit to Northville, Michigan, where I went to Kennedy,” Ackerman relayed. “Then I attended first grade in Detroit, second grade in Lima, Ohio, and third and fourth grades in Muskegon, Michigan, before completing fifth grade and graduating from high school in Detroit.”
He said this was an experience which gifted him something he hopes younger generations never stop gaining: knowledge. “Some people think, ‘God, that must have been hard on you, moving like that,’ but it was wonderful,” Ackerman insisted. “You know, a year in a kid’s life is a long time. Being in those different places and getting acquainted with a different group of kids here, and another one there, and so forth and so on, it was a real education for me. I mean, I didn’t realize it was, but to have those different experiences with all these different people and kids was life-changing.”
Georgia stated how she felt this experience of meeting so many people at such a young age helped shape her grandfather into the personable man that people have gotten to know since he moved to Carbondale in 1985.
“I think the biggest thing I’ve learned from him as a young person is to never stop learning,” Georgia said. “He’s lived through quite a few social shifts in the last century, and has always been very open-minded. He’s not a stubborn old man and I’m really grateful for that.”
Ackerman enlisted as a naval cadet after graduating from Cooley High School in Detroit in 1943, right during the height of World War II. “I got my wings in commission in the Navy two weeks after the war ended,” Ackerman explained. “I learned to fly a Navy dive bomber and then I had the opportunity to get out with the G.I. Bill of Rights, which, by the way, is a wonderful, wonderful thing that happened to this country. Millions of kids got out of the service at that time and went to college who never would have otherwise, and I think that’s the reason we are so far ahead in technology and so forth.”
Ackerman himself received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in business. He finished college with a wife and three children — he’d later have two more children — and went on to work for an accounting firm. After retiring from his day job in Detroit at the age of 58, with three of his kids already living in Carbondale, Ackerman made the move with his wife to join his family here.
In addition to being closer to his kids and grandkids (and skiing) Ackerman soon stumbled into KDNK, where he decided to share his love of music with the Roaring Fork Valley.
“I moved here in 1985, and KDNK had started up only a few years before that. I had this collection of records, and when I found out they had disc jockeys and a studio, I thought to myself, ‘Why not?’” Ackerman recalled.
Decades later, he has become a Carbondale staple and is excited to spend this special birthday with his community.
“I can’t think of any real challenges [I’ve faced],” Ackerman concluded “Things just fell into place. When you have a family like I have, which is unbelievable, you can be so proud of the whole group; there’s never any challenge for me.”
All the community is invited to celebrate Ackerman’s 100th birthday at the Third Street Center on July 11 from 5:30 to 7:30pm.