Hennen: It's morning in North Dakota again

A famous political advertisement from the 1984 re-election campaign of President Ronald Reagan reminded voters: “It’s Morning in America again”! I cast my very first vote that year at the age of 20.

I had recently witnessed my dad lose his dream of owning a radio station in our hometown of Montevideo, Minnesota. The economic destruction of President Jimmy Carter and 20% interest rates crushed us. I was in search of a new dawn, and thankfully, it was unfolding before my very eyes. With the family business gone bust, I was out of a job. I set out for a new frontier: North Dakota. For the last 41 years, it has been a joy to call this great state home. And this journey has been a gift from God.

I started in Grand Forks working for an innovative local broadcaster, David Norman. We used grit and determination to launch North Dakota’s very first all-talk radio station in 1986. My first foray into politics was covering the heartbreaking loss of Sen. Mark Andrews to long-shot candidate Kent Conrad. It was a lonely business at the start, until we had the good fortune of meeting a radio legend in the making: Rush Limbaugh.

We were with Rush from day one when he launched his nationally syndicated radio show to a grand total of 47 radio stations in 1988. He never forgot us, even after he grew to a 600-plus-station network with 20 million listeners a week. Despite his on-air bravado, he was one of the most kind and humble people I have ever known. I wonder what Rush would be saying on the radio today? He was America’s anchorman, and I’m quite confident he would be giddy over the change America has witnessed unfold since last November.

After the early success of Limbaugh, I found myself attempting to mold my talk show into a regional version of his. I was humbled when the Wall Street Journal called me “The Rush Limbaugh of the Prairie.” It was high praise and totally unwarranted. He was the greatest of all time, and I was still a small-town radio kid at heart.

Eventually, my show was syndicated to other stations in North Dakota, including the iconic WDAY Radio in Fargo, North Dakota’s oldest radio station. That led to me accepting an offer from Bill and Jane Marcil to join Forum Communications as the general manager of WDAY and bringing my talk show to Fargo. From there, I was blessed to expand the show statewide, including acquiring a radio station in the heart of the Bakken in 2010.

What I have witnessed unfold in North Dakota over those years is nothing short of a miracle. Western North Dakota was tumbleweed territory. Now it’s a shining city on a hill that funds Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks and Minot. For four long years, our country has suffered under the Carter-like reign of Joe Biden. But we’re back. It’s definitely “Morning in America again,” and in North Dakota, too!