John E. ‘Jack’ Arsenault, WGMD general manager
John E. Arsenault, also known as Jack Renault, died Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., where he had lived for the past six months. He was born in Brewer, Maine, to Lyndell Smith and John E. Arsenault Nov. 4, 1938.
He graduated from the University of Southern Maine where he was a member of a very active thespian troupe that traveled extensively in India and Pakistan for six months, putting on popular American plays such as “Ah, Wilderness.”
He was a volunteer Army veteran and attended boot camp at Fort Bragg, N.C., where he taught languages to the Green Berets who were heading to Vietnam.
He moved to Philadelphia where he was hired as a disc jockey on a local radio station that brought him to Dover and WKEN. He also worked as a political reporter for the Wilmington News Journal (who suggested he shorten his name to Renault) and then with the Delaware State News. Interested in politics, he started working as a volunteer with Herman Brown who then hired him to run the campaigns of several prominent Republicans such as David Buckson, Andy Foltz and county row officers who were very successful in the 1970s.
He then moved back up to the Wilmington area where he worked on WILM and became “The Morning Mustache,” doing crazy bits to wake up Wilmington and the surrounding area for several years and doing many remotes to promote the radio station.
Moving to Sussex County in 1976, he continued his love of radio with WWTR in Bethany Beach as a disc jockey and then started selling advertising, which took him to WGMD radio in Rehoboth. He had a 30-or-more-year career with WGMD and spent the last several years there as general manager with the popular talk radio station. He was very well known for his great radio voice.
In addition to his radio work, Jack used to be an announcer for harness races at various area tracks, calling races at Dover Downs, Harrington Raceway, Georgetown Raceway and Ocean Downs in Berlin, Md.
Jack was very proud of his great-grandfather, Arthur Burlington Smith of Brewer, Maine, who was appointed United States Consul in Curacao, and invented and designed the famous pontoon bridge across St. Anna Bay on that island which opened in 1888. Capt. Smith was a hero there and enjoyed bringing his family that included Jack’s mother and her sisters to stay. A duplicate bridge was reconstructed in 1939 and stands today. When Jack visited there several years ago, he and his wife and friends were treated royally.
He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Patricia Palmer Arsenault; his three sons, John and his wife Ute Arsenault and their children Scott and Davin of Laconia, N.H.; James “JR” Arsenault and his friend Gina Chisko of Santa Rosa Beach (who with JR was Jack’s caretaker for the past few months); and Joseph “Jeff” Arsenault and his friend Lisa Tandy of Rehoboth Beach.
There will be no services.
