Perhaps Kirk Douglas but I certainly can think of no other Amsterdam native with a more famous or familiar voice than Bob Cudmore. For close to half a century we’ve listened to his unique baritone on local radio stations, starting with his hometown WCSS, where he was hired during his junior year at Amsterdam High School to work weekends. The next year he graduated as the Valedictorian of the Class of 1963 and went on to earn both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in English from Boston University.
While at BU, he deejay’d a rock & roll show on the school’s AM radio station and did news for the student-run FM station. He was on the air doing the news on November 22, 1963, when President John Kennedy was assassinated and based on the many interviews Cudmore has done over the years, I believe it was that benchmark experience that convinced the Amsterdam native to focus on the news and talk side of radio rather than the music end of it.
By 1968 Cudmore had completed college, failed his military physical which kept him out of the Vietnam War, gotten his first real job at a Cambridge, Massachusetts’ AM station and married Mary Pritchard. The job lasted just a year but the love affair with his beloved Mary lasted 33, producing the couple’s two children, Kathleen and Bob Jr. Sadly, Mary Cudmore died in 2001 after a valiant struggle with colon cancer.
He did a twelve-year stint as a morning show host at a Pittsfield, Massachusetts’ station and then Cudmore came home. Well, almost home…
