Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994 TAG: 9406290064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Coleman had been ill for a year and a half, but his death still came as a shock, his son, Ashby, said. Ashby Coleman said he talked to his father on Monday. Coleman said he wasn't feeling well, but would call his son back the next day. He died around 1 p.m. Tuesday.
Russ Brown, who helped Coleman start K92 in1979 and worked at the station until 1986, said many people knew Coleman was sick, but no one thought his illness was life threatening.
"I've been on the phone all day with people calling about his death," he said.
Coleman, a Roanoke native, was involved in several businesses but was best known for his radio station.
He bought WLRJ-FM, the station that became K92, from Lee Hartman & Sons in 1972 for $125,000. On Jan. 1, 1980, he changed the call letters to WXLK and the format to top 40.
Coleman told a reporter in 1985 that he was always fascinated by radio. He apparently never lost his love for it.
"As my wife says, I'd sell her and the children and everything else, but not the radio station," Coleman told the reporter.
K92 rode the wave of change in popularity from AM to FM radio to immediate success. Coleman didn't own the first FM radio station in the area, but he was the first to capitalize on its enormous potential here.
Brown credits the success of the station to Coleman's foresight.
"It was in the right place at the right time with the right format," he said.
Coleman had a different story. He said his daughter, Meredith, persuaded him to make the change.
Brown says Coleman usually kept business and personal relationships separate. "He was strong-minded in his business," Brown said. "But he was always a very kind man."
Coleman grew up in Roanoke, the son of a second-generation lawyer. He graduated from Jefferson High School in 1945 and from the University of Virginia in 1949.
His first business success was in real estate, first as a salesman for C.W. Francis & Son, then as a partner with Roy L. Mastin for 17 years.
Coleman dissolved the partnership with Mastin in 1973 to start his own company, Aylett B. Coleman Realty and Development, and to devote his attention to the radio station.
Mastin never doubted that Coleman would be successful in whatever he did. "He had a terrific mind," he said. He also was aggressive.
Mastin tells the story of how Coleman once saw a man slow down in his car to look at an apartment building that was for sale. Coleman figured the man was interested in the building. It wasn't long before Coleman sold it to him.
Coleman also benefited from what he called flukes.
Coleman was co-owner with Fred Bullington of Holiday Inn Hotel-Tanglewood, a venture that began when Coleman responded to an ad in the Wall Street Journal inviting inquiries from people interested in the hotel business. Coleman wanted to find out if land he and Bullington owned would be suitable for a hotel. The Holiday Inn people thought it was.
He wound up as a partner in Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburgers of Western Virginia after he was asked to show the chain potential restaurant sites in Roanoke.
Coleman also was active in politics for a while. He served as chairman of the Democratic Party in Roanoke, and was a delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
He moved to Florida several years ago.
"I wouldn't call it retirement," Ashby Coleman said. He was on the phone every day with his business associates and Ashby, who is the operations manager at K92 and the broker of the real estate firm.
Ashby said he and his father were not always close. "His wife says he and I were too much alike," he said. "But anything he ever told me was always right. Unfortunately, I ignored about 95 percent of it."
But Ashby said in the last 10 years, his father became his best friend. "He was always there for me and anyone else who needed him," he said.
Coleman is survived by his wife, Mary Kay, his son, Ashby, and his daughter, Anne Meredith.
by CNB