ON THE VERY DAY GARY
STELLY ’90 became the
owner of KOGT Radio in
Orange, Hurricane Andrew
crossed the state of Florida
and headed into the Gulf of Mexico.
“It was predicted that Andrew would pick
up force and hit land again on the upper Texas
coast,” said Stelly, a mass communication graduate,
in recalling that day in late August of
1992. “My first thought was, ‘Oh, my gosh,
I’ve just purchased a radio station that’s going
to be blown off the map in just a couple of
more days.’”
Well, history tells us Stelly’s station was
not blown off the map as Andrew graciously
detoured and did no damage, whatsoever, to
the Texas coast.
Since that time, however, Stelly’s voice
has guided residents of Orange County and
beyond through two major hurricanes—first
Rita in 2005 and, most recently, Ike last fall.
That resonant voice has described destruction,
despair, displacement, desperation and pure devastation. On
the other hand, that voice has also passed on inspiration, invigoration,
encouragement, optimism and a belief in a rejuvenated Orange
County.
That voice has also kept Orange Countians in close contact with
their athletic teams. It regaled listeners with the exploits of West
Orange-Stark’s football team during the Mustangs’ march to the
2000 Class 4A state championship game, climbs by Orangefield and
Bridge City to the state baseball tournament and a state championship
by Little Cypress-Mauriceville’s 2006 softball team.
In Orange County, Stelly’s voice is a constant. He hits the air at
5 a.m. for his four-hour morning show. He jump starts his listeners’
days by delivering overall newscasts, sports news, commercials and
other items of local interest.
When off the air, Stelly is busy meeting with clients, selling
the station’s programming, handling the business end of the
operations, doing on-the-site news reporting and preparing for his
next sporting event. There’s never an idle moment.
“It’s easily 18 hours a day, six days a week,” said Stelly in
describing his workload. “Unlike what some people think, though,
I no longer jump out of bed in the middle of the night to go to a
wreck scene or a fire—unless, of course, it’s a major one.”
In Stelly’s eyes, though, all news in Orange County is major
news, and it’s his obligation to report it to his constituents, both
on the air and through KOGT’s Web site.
“I’m just doing the job,” Stelly modestly said. “We provide a
service. It became addictive to me years and years ago. If there’s a
story out there, the people depend upon me to provide it, and I don’t want to disappoint them. Most importantly,
I want it to be accurate. It’s imperative
that I keep up to speed on everything.”
Stelly really had to get up to speed on that
early morning in late September of 2005 when
Hurricane Rita slammed into Southeast Texas.
“Rita was something new to me, new to
you and new to everyone,” said Stelly. “We
knew what it was like to have threats of hurricanes,
but we had never experienced an actual,
full-blown hurricane. By the time Ike got
here last year, though, we knew what to
expect, and we were much more prepared.
“First off, after Rita hit, I didn’t even
know if I had a radio station to go back to. I
live in the Little Cypress area a little north of
Orange. There were so many downed trees, it
took us four hours with chain saws to cut our
way out of the neighborhood. In my mind, I
was cutting my way out to nothing.
“Fortunately, the station had withstood
the storm with relatively little damage, and we
were able to get back on the air. Sometimes,
I want to tear up when I think about some
of the things I had to report, but it was my
obligation. The people had to know.
“In retrospect, though, I sometimes
think Rita was good for us as a community,
because it brought us together. After getting
over the initial shock of what had hit us, I
became so fired up. We had messages we had
to get to the people. They were starved to
know, and we thrived on knowing we were
providing them with the information.
“Richard Corder (longtime KOGT disc
jockey and newsman) and I were a two-man
crew. We got a couple of mattresses and set up
camp in the station. We went out and took pictures
for our Web site; we interviewed it seems
like hundreds of citizens, and we worked closely
with officials of Orange County and the Red
Cross in getting out the news.
“Up until that time, the worst natural
disaster situation I had covered was the ice
storm of 1997. This was 10 times worse.
There was tremendous devastation, and it tore
at my heart.
“We had evacuees out there, and they
had lots of questions. They wanted to come
home, and it was difficult to tell them there
wasn’t a whole lot for them to come back to
at that time because of the lack of power and
the sweltering heat. They were probably better
off where they were. I wanted to paint as
positive of a picture as possible, but I also had
to paint an accurate picture.”
While the brunt of Rita’s damage came
from the wind, Stelly said Ike was, “a completely
different creature,” in that most of its
destruction in Orange County came from the
storm surge.
“Early in the morning after Ike hit, I was
on the telephone getting an update from
(Orange mayor) Brown Claybar, and, all of a
sudden, he said, ‘I have to let you go,’” said
Stelly, a 1984 graduate of Orangefield High
School. “Water was overtopping the levee and
beginning to come in. It was already 2 to 3
feet high in Bridge City, and it was rising by
the minute.
“Fortunately, I have a friend, Pete Cloeren,
who has a large, all-terrain vehicle—I call it a
Hummer on steroids—and my wife, Angie
(Caples) ’88, and I went out in it with him to
do live reports. By the time we got to Bridge
City, the water was at the top of the Cow
Bayou Bridge.
“We had to take an alternative route to
get there, and a deputy
(Orange County) sheriff
stopped us and told us they
needed to use our vehicle
to get into town because
they hadn’t been able to get
there with what was at
their disposal at that time.
I’ll never forget the sight of
Bridge City when we first
got there. It looked like the
town had moved into
Sabine Lake. It looked like
nothing was left.”
For the next few hours, Stelly was more
than a newsman. He was also part of the
rescue effort.
“We had two firefighters with us who
started pulling people off rooftops and getting
them out of their attics,” said Stelly. “There
were so many people in need of help. We
probably helped get 50 people and at least 30
dogs and other pets to safety. The wind was
still so strong it would literally pick up the
truck, but it was like a military vehicle, and it
got us through the ordeal.
“To this day, I don’t know how Fox
News got my cell phone number, but they
called me, and I did a live interview with
them. It was my duty to let as many people as
possible know what the situation was in
Bridge City and in Orange County.
“It was a difficult time for me because
I knew so many people in Bridge City. The
things I had to tell them made me sick. I
had to tell them about lost homes and lost
businesses. Fortunately, I did not have to tell
them about lost lives.”
One thing that particularly touched
Stelly during his coverage of Hurricane Rita’s
aftermath was the loyalty of left-behind pets.
“I’ve always had a soft spot for pets, and
I saw so many over the first few days after
Ike,” said Stelly. “There were dogs so wet and
so hungry and so scared, but they were still
protective of their owners’ property. When
you first approached, they were still protecting
their yards.
“Our station became a drop-off point for
people who wanted to donate dog food and
cat food and other pet items. The halls were
cluttered with it, and I distributed it as best I
could while I made my daily rounds. It was
gratifying to see how the community
responded to pets in need.”
On the evening of April 24, Stelly
broadcast what most people would think
was a routine West
Orange-Stark-at-
Orangefield baseball game.
To Stelly, however, it was
special, because it was his
1,000th-called game since
he first started on a
part-time basis at KOGT
while still in high school
in 1983.
“It was a fitting game
to have as my 1,000th,”
said Stelly. “I thought
it was nice to be able
to make that call in what had been my
home stadium.”
Although still serving as the lead man on
KOGT’s sports coverage adds hours to Stelly’s
workload, he says it’s a labor of love—one he
would not even consider relinquishing.
“I still get excited with almost every
game I call,” said Stelly. Recently, he called
LC-M’s baseball playoff game against Buda
Hayes in College Station.
“They (LC-M’s Battlin’ Bears) were
down 4-0 to a 26-1 team, and they hadn’t
even been close to getting a hit since the
second inning. Somehow, they managed to
score four runs in the bottom of the seventh,
and they eventually won the game 5-4 in the
ninth. If you can’t get excited about something
like that, you can’t get excited about
anything.”
Chances are Orange Countians are
hoping the 43-year-old Stelly continues to
stay excited for many years to come.
