CUMBERLAND — Julie Patterson knows how to throw a party.
As the special projects coordinator for the Town of Cumberland, she’s in charge of planning community events like the Cumberland Arts Festival and the ever-popular Blues, Beer and BBQ events.
The fun-filled job is right up Patterson’s alley, even if it comes at a much slower pace than she’s been used to in the past.
Patterson spent the bulk of her career as a well-known Indianapolis radio and TV personality, hosting the popular morning show on WZPL-99.5 FM and later on WENS-97.1 FM, then serving as traffic anchor for WISH-TV Daybreak until 2014.
Although Patterson doesn’t mention it, her LinkedIn bio shows she once won Best on Air Talent from the organization American Women in Radio and Television.
She’s lived just a mile west of Cumberland for the past 26 years, and is enjoying her gig planning events for the community, but memories of her former, fast-paced life are never far behind.
A Rocky III poster signed by Sylvester Stallone hangs in her office at Cumberland Town Hall, a relic from those fast-paced days, when Patterson was often rubbing shoulders with celebrities, jet-setting around covering press junkets for movie premieres and awards shows.
“Elton John was probably my favorite. He’s just a classy, wonderful individual,” said Patterson, a high-energy extrovert with a quick wit and easy smile.
Her eyes light up when she recalls some of the highlights of her former life, like attending the Grammys in 1992, or flying first-class to cover the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Some of her very favorite memories were the wacky contests she helped host over the years, like the “Live in It to Win It” contest, which invited four strangers to live alongside each other inside a car parked in a mall, or the one where players chugged Orange Crush for the chance to meet Jon Bon Jovi.
One of the biggest highlights of her career was the day Bon Jovi called her up on stage on her 40th birthday during a concert at Market Square Arena.
Perks like that are a big part of what made her broadcasting career so fun, said Patterson, although the real highlight has been the interactions she’s had with everyday people.
She’ll never forget the day she was doing her morning radio show at WZPL when the first plane hit on Sept. 11, 2001. “We were broadcasting live when the second plane hit, and we stayed on live all day long. We walked alongside the community through it all day that day,” she said.
Nowadays, some morning radio hosts have a whole team of people scanning headlines and making up jokes to be shared on air, she said. But not so much back in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
“Each morning I’d have five newspapers I’d go through and take a razor blade to cut out interesting things to talk about on air that day, and we made up all our own jokes and parody songs. We’d record interviews on tape and splice them together with a piece of tape. It was a blast,” she said.
She still speaks fondly of the people she spent so many early morning hours alongside, year after year. The hours were brutal, but a lot of fun, she recalled.
“I got up at 2 a.m. for the better part of 31 years,” said Patterson, who took a few years off to be a stay-at-home mom to her three now-grown kids.
The Tennessee native first came to Indiana to play basketball at Taylor University, then transferred to Ball State University, where she first fell in love with broadcasting.
She then fell in love with a Hoosier, her future husband, Pat Patterson.
After a long and exciting career in broadcasting, Patterson decided to ease into what she calls her “giving back years” by working a number of slower paced jobs after leaving her post at WISH-TV in 2014.
She spent six years working at her children’s school in Warren Township before taking on her current role in Cumberland last November. Patterson said she quickly fell in love with the job.
“I just loved it from the first day,” said Patterson, who is happy to help showcase the fun side of Cumberland, which is divided between Hancock and Marion counties. “It’s a great place to be,” she said.
