Lee started in radio on weekends at a small station in Montrose, Colorado in 1962 while still in high school. By 1963 he was on-air at Denver’s KIMN and soon hosting the all-night show. Probably best known for his longtime run as DJ Lee Randall and later Program Director at KTSA/San Antonio, he brought one of the most influential 50,000-watt stations in the country to number three nationally. He also worked at KFJZ/Dallas-Ft.Worth, WACO/Waco,KILT 610/Houston, and KHOU/Houston. In 1983, he left the broadcast booth to become a self-employed programming consultant. Over seventeen years he consulted over sixty stations across the US, frequently flying his own plane to the next gig. Cox Media Group’s Rob Roberts recently posted a tribute online, “Lee was an amazing radio man on two levels ... he was smarter than just about anyone and he loved sharing what he knew. Lee’s legacy lives on in radio stations everywhere because of his kindness in sharing.” In 1997, Lee left consulting to spend more time with new wife, Carrye.
He liked to refer to his radio days as having been “a professional athlete of the tongue,” and joked, “you can’t turn the dial off me now,” as he went on at length about an increasing number of interests.
Lee and Carrye moved to the home he designed and built in the Texas Hill Country. He turned his focus to golf and then horticulture with characteristic passion. In short order, he became a Comal Master Gardener, a gardening instructor, educational speaker and then a writer. His monthly gardening articles appeared in five Hill Country magazines for four years; he wrote his last piece from his hospital bed. While an inpatient, he learned he would be inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in November at a ceremony at the Texas Museum of Broadcasting and Communications in Kilgore, Texas.
Lee will be missed by so many. Wife, Carrye; sons, Michael Franzel and J. Wesley Franzel; sister Mary Nichol and family, sister Sharon Franzel, the many cousins who were like siblings to him through the years, a wealth of people in the radio and gardening worlds, and by Abby and Pauli, his “two favorite quadripeds.” Lee’s radio dial was turned off August 15, 2019 with Carrye by his side.
Memorial services will be held September 7, 2019, 10 am at St. John’s Episcopal Church, New Braunfels, TX. Donations may be made to Hope Hospice of New Braunfels whose team made all the difference through the last of his journey.
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