Born in Philadelphia and raised in Rosemont, PA, Tom Busch has served as General Manager of Nome, Alaska's KNOM-AM/FM since 1975. During his tenure, KNOM has twice won both the National Association of Broadcasters' Marconi and Crystal Awards, and an unprecidented eleven Gabriel "Radio Station of the Year" Awards, plus many honors from Associated Press, Scripps-Howard, and numerous others.

The station is owned by the Catholic diocese of Fairbanks, and is funded entirely by private donations. Its spiritual and educational signal beams into dozens of remote Eskimo and Athabascan Indian villages, as well as to several thousand miles of Russian coastline.

Tom served on the Alaska Broadcasters Association board for 18 years and twice served as its President. During his first term, he successfully lobbied the FCC to provide Alaskan AM stations extended distant signal protection. Later, he was the trade group's Secretary for ten years. Having organized Alaska's annual convention for many years, he was honored as their first "Broadcaster of the Year" in 1986, and was inducted into their Alaska Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1998. That same year, Tom was presented with the Agnellus Andrew Award, becoming the only North American broadcaster to ever be so honored.

Tom's broadcasting career began at WLDB-AM in Atlantic City in the summer of 1966.  He was chief engineer of the campus radio station at Boston College, from which he was graduated with a BA in Psychology in 1969.  During school, he worked part time at a now-defunct commercial station in Boston, and in summers, at WLDB.

On February 8, 1970, Tom arrived in Nome, to serve as a Jesuit volunteer.  A licensed First Class Radiotelephone engineer, he designed and supervised the construction of KNOM-AM, and volunteered for the new station for three years.

During KNOM's coverage of the first Iditarod Race in 1973, he was offered a job with KIAK in Fairbanks, where he served as chief engineer, morning deejay, commercial voice, special events producer and daily 5PM  newscaster, before rejoining KNOM as General Manager in 1975.

Tom's voice has stretched worldwide, for many years, the primary national source of news originating from western Alaska via first the Mutual Network, and since 1980, AP Radio. He has been an accredited correspondent and a trusted source for the Associated Press for over thirty years.

In 1976, Tom began writing a daily diary of the Iditarod Race, to keep KNOM staff informed of the nuances of the event, and beginning that year, the account, which runs to 35,000 words some years, has been published in its entirety by "Team and Trail" magazine, the world's most widely circulated sled dog mushing publication.

For eleven years, Tom was secretary of Nome's Rotary Club, and was its president 1992-93. In addition to Rotary and the Alaska Broadcasters Association, he is also a past president of Nome's Kegoayah Kozga Association, which once supervised Nome's library and museum, as well as past president of Nome Preschool, Inc.  Nome Preschool continues to use the excellent building which was constructed during Tom's term.

On May 24, 2004, Boston College conferred upon Tom an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Humane Letters.

Tom and his wife Florence have two children, both grown. They enjoy traveling as finances permit, as well as helping various social groups in town, and spending quiet evenings at their crude cabin on the bank of the tiny Nome River, fighting the ravages of grizzy bears, moose and beavers. They are both lectors, Eucharistic ministers and lay presiders, and have serve many other roles at their parish. They both have served multiple terms on the parish council, and Tom continues to work on the church's financial committee.

Tom has been an amateur radio operator since 1970, and holds the highest class, Extra, call sign NL7H. He volunteers as a license examiner, and thanks to interest in the hobby sparked by recent (starting in 1997) mountaintop repeaters, he's helped over one hundred Nomeites successfully earn amateur licenses.  He has enjoyed many backpacking trips into the Seward Peninsula's Kigluaik Mountains.

For the past nine years, he's voraciously written three complete Nome-based novels, and is currently working on a fourth and a fifth. A publisher who had contracted to publish his first work went out of business, and he is seeking an agent to represent all of his novels, which he believes are highly marketable. "They were sure fun to write," he says, "and made into movies, they'll make somebody--probably not me--a fortune."

Tom intends to remain with KNOM.  In addition to serving as General Manager for thirty years, he was Development Director since 1982, and since 2003, Chief Engineer. The Catholic station is an "office politics-free zone," Tom says, and while working there is a bare living, "the kindness, the spirituality and goodwill of the people whom I supervise make this a very rewarding, though extremely demanding job," he says.  In 2005, Tom and Florence moved to Anchorage, where he will continue to work as KNOM's Development Director and Emergency Engineer, free of the demands of management.

In 2006- , Tom serves as Rotary District 5010 Secretary.  The district, including Alaska, the Yukon Territory and Russia east of the Ural Mountains, comprises 10.5% of the world's land mass.

Back to Tom Busch's Nome, Alaska page

revised June 9, 2006