Wick Moses, Jan. 22, 1947 – Feb. 23, 2023

It is with heavy hearts that the community bids adieu to Wick Moses, a fun-loving man who played a great role in the shaping of Carbondale’s culture.

Wick came to the Roaring Fork Valley in 1963 as a student at Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS). He came by train from Springfield, Massachusetts, with a head full of dreams, an electric guitar and amp and a Sony transistor AM radio. After graduating in 1966, Wick studied history at the University of Denver, got immersed in the hippie scene and discovered a love of FM radio and stereo sound systems.

“I am still wearing the CRMS school uniform — jeans, and a flannel shirt,” he joked during an interview with The Sopris Sun last year. “The summer of ‘67 was the last summer I spent back east and I never went back.”

He returned to CRMS to teach in 1970 and later opened a record store on Main Street which expanded to Aspen before closing in 1980. Wick and Pat Noel were the dual managers of KDNK when it first came on the air in April 1983. He later served on the station’s board of directors and was an avid supporter (leveling honest criticisms at times) for the past four decades.

Wick also performed at the very first Mountain Fair (Chautauqua) and was part of the fair’s early leadership and sound direction. “The thing about Mountain Fair was that it carried on that whole idea of a group of volunteers coming together to create something. That really was a big driving force in the town,” Moses told The Sopris Sun.

After Wick followed “love and money” back to Denver in 1988 and returned to the Valley in 1992, KDNK had moved its transmitter to Sunlight Peak and now had valley-wide coverage. In the ensuing years, he hosted a jazz show, sold underwriting and did production work and engineering for the station until his retirement in 2012.

As well as an audiophile, Wick was a motorcycle enthusiast and traveled the American West. He watched Carbondale grow and change along with new technologies and expressed gladness in 2022 at seeing young people continue to come to the area and be involved in creating community.

“One of the things I think about during the whole time I have been involved with Carbondale is that there was this incredibly fascinating cast of characters that came here. The place attracted some really unusual and unique people. For the most part, they were really good people.” 

Editor’s note: Wick’s beloved cat, Jazzy, has been adopted into a new home.