Ex-radio station owner, jazz show host, visitors bureau VP Kaminsky dies

Just last week, Sid Kaminsky told his daughter Beth Heindel what he’d like written on his gravestone:

He never knew a stranger.

“And that’s what he’s going to get,” Heindel said Friday as she prepared for his unexpected funeral. “It’s absolutely true. He loved everyone.”

From welcoming to his home country music stars such as Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard, who played in Columbus thanks to his ownership of WPNX 1460-AM, to welcoming tourists to his adopted hometown as an official with the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Chattahoochee Valley never had a better ambassador, say those who knew Kaminsky, who died Wednesday from a heart attack in his Pine Mountain home. He was 74.

The funeral is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday at Shearith Israel Synagogue, 6727 River Road in Columbus, followed by interment in Riverdale Cemetery, 1000 Victory Drive, according to Striffler-Hamby Mortuary.

CVB president and chief executive officer Peter Bowden worked with Kaminsky at both ends of his career. Bowden’s first job out of college was as a copywriter in the late 1970s at WPNX, now WHAL. Three decades later, the roles were reversed, and Kaminsky came to work under Bowden’s leadership as the CVB’s vice president for leisure travel and convention sales, from 2005-14.

“Sid never changed,” Bowden said. “He was always happy, always upbeat, always excitable.”

Whether it was convincing groups to choose the Columbus area for their destination or energizing the CVB staff despite being its oldest member, Bowden said, “Sid was vivacious and one of those guys who just made a difference.”

Action Buildings CEO Mark Cantrell, the District 6 representative on the Muscogee County School Board, also got his first job in radio at WPNX, where he worked for a few years and started his 30-year radio announcing career in 1979.

“Sid was just a good man and a good owner,” Cantrell said. “Employees always enjoyed working for him.”

That’s because Sid showed he cared.

“I worked for many radio stations where you didn’t have contact with the owner,” Cantrell said, “but Sid always came in to support you and pat you on the back. People felt like family around him.”

Kaminsky was so popular with clients and potential clients, Bowden said, the CVB made bobblehead dolls with his image. And those dolls often were “Sid-napped” from the CVB’s exhibit booth at trade shows, Bowden said.

“He was probably one of our best ambassadors or advocates,” Bowden said.

In fact, Heindel said, after he retired from the CVB and clearly couldn’t stay cooped up in the Pine Mountain home he shared with her family, the Stars and Strikes bowling center and arcade in Columbus not only hired him but created a new position for him — “Ambassador of First Impressions” — as a grand greeter.

“They were going to have him train future ambassadors for their new locations,” Heindel said, “but he never got to do that.”

Kaminsky did, however, do plenty more in his life.

Born in Savannah, he earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1964, according to his obituary. After working at a radio station in Knoxville, Tenn., he moved to Columbus in 1967 and became owner of the Bi-State Broadcasting Company. WPNX earned nine gold and platinum record awards as a Billboard reporting station under his ownership.

In 1974, Kaminsky co-created the R&B station WFXE-Foxie 105-FM, where he also was known as “Sid the K” for hosting a jazz show. The show became syndicated on the Peach State Public Radio network with the title “Jazz at the Peach.” He was a founding member of the Columbus Jazz Society in 1987 and twice served as president.

In 1978, Kaminsky became vice president for marketing at Goodwill Industries. He and his wife, Judith, moved to California in 1996 to be closer to their two daughters. Kaminsky continued hosting his jazz show on a public radio station, KCLU, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and partnered with Judith and Heindel in a real estate business. The three of them moved back to Pine Mountain in 2004.

His community involvement included serving as an officer or member of Shearith Israel Synagogue, Columbus Hospice, Columbus Toastmasters, Columbus Museum, Columbus Battered Women’s Association and Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce.

Judith, who had multiple sclerosis, died in 2015. In addition to Heindel and her husband, Todd, and children, Jake and Sofie, Kaminsky is survived by his daughter and son-in-law Jana and Jeff Hoyt.

Although he had diabetes and an irregular heartbeat, Heindel said, her father’s death still was a shock.

“But at least he wasn’t suffering,” she added. “Thank goodness he didn’t have a long illness. … A lot of people would say, ‘Do you really want to live with your father?’ But I’m so blessed and fortunate he was living with us. He was like one of my kids, like having a 74-year-old 12-year-old.”

This story was originally published May 5, 2017 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Ex-radio station owner, jazz show host, visitors bureau VP Kaminsky dies."