Archive: Around Town

For nine hours today, Justin Wright and Mike "Birdman" Bird hammered the plea for donations to cover the Tompkins County American Red Cross cost of helping the victims of last week's West Hill Overlook Apartments fire. Today they scraped their usual programming format and threw the programming open to the public. Officially, today was Flush the Format Day. For a donation of any size, they would play any song on Z95.5 from 6 am to 3 pm. They even had to sing several songs - but of course, that cost extra. By the end of this fund-raising day, they had raised $3,025 for the Tompkins County American Red Cross - all donations from area residents, willing to lend a helping hand to their neighbor and have a little fun while doing it.

The Flush the Format fund-raising day was conceived by Justin Wright, Z95.5 program director, who himself had been a fire disaster victim while living in Roanoke, Virginia. He recalls, "I lost everything - clothes, furniture, photographs. I was lucky, however, because the radio station I was working at did a big fund-raising drive for me and that, combined with the help of the Roanoke Chapter of the Red Cross, helped me get back on my feet."

The Z95.5 fund-raising effort actually began on Tuesday of this week when Diamon & Bacorn deposited a big Allied Van Lines moving trailer in the Z95.5 parking lot. From there, Justin and Birdman started asking for donations of everything from furniture to clothes to cooking utensils. By the end of today, the truck was a quarter full.

 

The Tompkins County American Red Cross is extremely grateful that a strong community partner like Z95.5 would devote so much airtime to fund-raising for our local Chapter and that the people of Tompkins County would open their hearts and pockets to this appeal. However, Justin Wright considers it all in a day's work, "It's all about making a difference and giving back - I've been there so this is really something I had to do."

 

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