Arthur Kellar, 84, Radio Baron Pioneered Easy Listening
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Arthur C. Kellar, 84, a Northern Virginia businessman and civic leader
who built a multi-station broadcasting company that helped usher easy
listening to FM radio, died of cancer March 18 at his home in Fairfax.
Mr. Kellar founded O.K. Broadcasting in 1956 and that year purchased
his first radio station, WEEL-AM in Fairfax. In the 1960s and 1970s,
WEEL was one of the Washington area's most popular Top 40 stations.
In 1967, Mr. Kellar brought WEZR in Manassas and founded EZ
Communications Inc., which owned or operated 26 AM and FM stations
across the United States.
At WEZR, Mr. Kellar helped popularize the easy listening format of
largely instrumental or soft, laid-back music on an FM station. In
1970, his company used the format to much success on its newly
acquired FM station in Richmond.
In 1996, after the easing of deregulation rules, EZ Communications
merged with Boston-based American Radio Systems Inc., sealing a $655
million deal that made the resulting company the second-largest
station operator in the country. He retired shortly afterward.
"This is the opportunity we have been looking for ever since
deregulation," Mr. Kellar told The Washington Post in 1996. "With one
last reference to the Olympics, we've passed off the baton and now
we're going for the gold."
Mr. Kellar, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., served in the Army during
World War II and received the Bronze Star Medal for service in France
and Italy. He graduated from American University in 1946 and became a
disc jockey in Ronceverte, W.Va.
"I got off the train and walked the two blocks to the [radio] station,
and when I walked inside my very first thought was, 'I've got to own
one of these,' " he told an interviewer last year.
After leaving West Virginia, he worked as a sales manager for WPIK in
Alexandria before buying WEEL. He sold the station in 1972 but went on
to own stations from Philadelphia to Seattle. He retired from
broadcasting in the late 1990s.
Mr. Kellar was a trustee for George Mason University and the Fairfax
Hospital Association, which later became Inova Health System.
He also was a board member of many Washington companies, including
Precision Auto Care, United Bankshares, George Mason Bankshares,
American Radio Systems Corp. and American Medical Laboratories.
He was a longtime Washington Redskins ticketholder and golfer who
played in many charity tournaments across the Washington area. He was
a member of the Country Club of Fairfax.
Mr. Kellar and his wife, Elizabeth Patton "Betty" Kellar, established
the Kellar Family Foundation to support health-care organizations,
education, human services and the performing arts. She died in 2006.
The foundation's efforts include the Helen A. Kellar Institute for
Human Disabilities at George Mason, named in memory of Mr. Kellar's
daughter who died in 1998, and two family theaters that bear Mr.
Kellar's name -- at the Potomac Stages and the Center for the Arts at
the Candy Factory in Manassas. With the foundation's assistance, Inova
Health System founded the Inova Kellar Center in 1991 to provide
mental health services to children and families regardless of their
ability to pay.
Mr. Kellar, who was president of the foundation, also started the
Kellar Radio Farm System Institute, a summer program at Appalachian
State University in North Carolina to bring young people, including
underprivileged youths, into the radio industry. The program was set
to start this summer.
Survivors include two daughters, Judy Box of Crowheart, Wyo., and Mary
Kellar of Fairfax; a brother; two sisters; and three grandchildren.
By Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 17, 2007; Page B07