Photo provided by Jan Tucker Jan Tucker during one of her final broadcasts in 2021,

ONTONAGON — Ontonagon resident and Upper Peninsula radio legend, Jan Tucker is approaching five years since her final broadcast in April 2021.

Tucker a fixture in the western Upper Peninsula airwaves for 52 years. Her broadcasts were aired on WJMS and WIMI in Ironwood, WMPL in Hancock and Ontonagon’s WUPY — sharing recipes, local news stories and fielding listeners calls. In the throws of post-retirement life, Tucker remains optimistic, generous and humble.

Tucker is at home most days — reading U.P.-themed mystery novels and listening to the radio. She is not sharing many recipes currently, but is still grateful for everything her career has lead her to so she could enjoy her retirement. “I always say of course my legacy is my huge family,” she said.

Tucker said she would have family all throughout the United States call her and say people recognized them through their last name and recalled people being impacted by her work. It is not everyday people would get up in the morning and be excited and look forward to go to work. For Tucker, every day was a new adventure. “I really miss it,” she said. “I always feel that I was blessed … every morning I liked to get up. And I never, ever, y’know, got up and said ‘oh, I have to go to work today.'”

Tucker said she always had the ability to impact people through her work broadcasting and covering the news. It is a skill she feels is a lost art in today’s world. As radio and print news continues to morph and change, veteran and retired reporters who started in the 1960s and 1970s feel their brand of reporting is being left behind.

“That’s the one thing that is kind of fading — people don’t want to work that hard,” she said. “It’s a long, hard experience, but it’s fun.”

Tucker said her time in radio informed an older crowd about the news and the happenings of the Copper Country. Her radio content always gave viewers something to look forward to as they get older and go out less. “Especially for older people … they no longer get newspapers because they can’t see that well, and the radio is always there,” she said. “So, I think that the radio is for older people.”

Tucker uplifted her listeners right up until her retirement in 2021. She kept letters she from listeners in a chest at home. She shared a story about a letter she recently receuived from a Houghton County woman who wrote about battling loneliness after moving to the U.P.

“She came to the U.P., and she’d never been here before — she didn’t know anybody,” Tucker said. “She said she was very, very lonely and very, very unhappy. She said that she did not have any friends here.”

Tucker said somebody told the woman she should listen to her radio program. “She said that she started listening to the show and felt like she had a friend. She started to look outward and she said that she now has all kinds of friends.”

Tucker said the woman in the story wanted to write her letter sooner than she did, but is glad it reached Tucker’s house recently. “She wanted me to know that I was responsible her to feel so much better,” Tucker said.

WUPY air personality Jackie Dobbins, was a Jan Tucker listener who became her colleague when Jan joined the Ontonagon radio’s staff. “I remember when we first heard that Jan was coming to WUPY 20 some years ago, and being nervous about it” She was the queen after all” Dobbins said. “It turned out to be one of the best things in my life. We still talk all the time, (we) don’t get to see each other as much, but she is always on my mind, and she does inform me that she prays for me all the time. Guess we all need all the help we can get.”

As she reached her 80s, Tucker knew her on-air career was coming to an end — but she did not expect it to end like it did. She said she suffered a health emergency on the air in March 2021, which was a factor for her to decide to retire.

“I had to retire, because I was getting up there in age, and I had a mini-stroke right on the air,” she said. “There were so many people that called to say something was wrong.”

After the incident, Tucker ended her show after 52 years of almost constant broadcast. She joked about starting and ending on the air. She misses it everyday, but is glad she had the opportunity to share her life with people.

Tucker’s family is one of the most important things to her, in the same home she broadcasted her show in, she raised many children — all of which will carry on her legacy.

In the midst of her retirement, Tucker knows that she is doing less and not seeing as many people as she once did, but is still appreciative of those who supported her throughout her time working in media.

“I really appreciate [the listeners] … it was my whole career, I wouldn’t have had at the career if it wasn’t for the people that really cared,” she said. “You could always turn off a dial, you could always throw a paper away — but they didn’t do that.”