Walla Walla Radio’s “Dan Tory” was my brother Daniel Marvin Todorovich

(Jaynie Dillon Jones on KUJ & KTEL, Walla Walla) The fertile soil of the Walla Walla Valley has produced many remarkable radio and television talents including several from my own family dating back to the 1940s. Walla Walla radio’s “Dan Tory” was my brother Dan Todorovich. He was born in Walla Walla, WA to Dan and Avis Todorovich. Serbian immigrants, the Todorovich family farmed land in College Place producing crops of Walla Walla Sweet Onions and lettuce until the mid-1950s. Dan graduated from McLoughlin High School, Milton-Freewater, OR, and earned a degree in Business Administration from Walla Walla College, College Place, WA. During school years, his talent for public speaking and acting developed through participation in Thespians, as did his popularity. For decades he wrote almost daily in his journals, and put considerable time and effort into creative writing, too. He had a natural gift for and interest in languages with intense focus on English, but also including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, and Serbian; he also held a fascination for Korean and other Asian cultures. He served honorably in the Oregon Army National Guard and the United States Army Reserve from 1962 – 1968 achieving the rank of Staff Sergeant and recognition for excellent marksmanship.

He went on to become a licensed pilot, professional photographer, hotel/motel manager, lead security officer several sites around Puget Sound, and spent the majority of his business life as a commercial real estate sales executive, in Seattle. His professional careers included becoming a radio personality on KUJ, K-HIT, and KTEL, Walla Walla, KLER, Orofino, Idaho, an AM radio station in Pendleton (possibly the original KUBE AM), and KDNC FM, Spokane; he also worked for a time at Walla Walla’s first TV station. Politically, Dan was involved in the Seattle Young Men’s Republican Club, which later became the Downtown Republican Club. He played a pivotal role in launching Dino Rossi’s political career in the 1980s by producing and directing a series of 58 weekly public television programs featuring Rossi. During the 1990s, Dan received a special award during a commendation ceremony from the King County Sheriff’s Department in recognition of his outstanding proactive efforts in support of law enforcement to clean-up drug and prostitution activity in the city of Shoreline (north of Seattle). While a student at Walla Walla College, he had served as a police officer with the College Place Police Department back in the early 1960s.

Dan and his wife, Sandra Jayne Love Todorovich, traveled the world and lived in Germany, England, and Israel, where they lived on a kibbutz, for several years in the 1970s. They were married in 1963 and divorced after returning to the US from the UK. Each of them went into real estate careers although in different locations: Sandy was a surgery nurse at a specialty hospital in Lake Tahoe, so established her real estate career there simultaneously. But my brother returned to the Seattle area and went into commercial real estate and television. He taught pottery classes, leather tooling, and various crafts while living in Germany. His artistic talents included charcoal and pencil sketching, oil, acrylic, and watercolor painting. Dan became proficient at playing guitar and looked forward to jam sessions with other musicians – most of all, our sister Kitty, our dad, and other Todorovich family members.

Our father was Dan Todorovich, Sr. and was born in Canada to Serbian immigrants in 1917. He was the first of our family members to launch a career in radio. My brother, Daniel Marvin Todorovich, followed our father’s lead a few years later by also going into radio, but it was all the way back in the late 1940s and into the 1950s that our dad, Dan Todorovich, was joined by one of his younger brothers, Sonnie ‘Bud’ Todorovich (the original Todorovich family had ten children), and another family friend joined our dad and his brother to perform live music on-air in the studio at KUJ, Walla Walla during those years in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Even after long, hot days in the onion fields and orchards, they would put on a live radio show each Saturday evening at KUJ as a trio of singers, songwriters, and guitarists. They wrote all of their own music. They were self-taught on guitar. They sang and played their original songs each Saturday night on KUJ. Their trio was known as “The Cascadians”. All of their music was handwritten in spiral notebooks.

Years later, my brother Dan (known mostly among family as ‘Marv’ but preferred to be called ‘Dan’ by his peers and in business) would end up doing the afternoon drivetime “Road Show” on KUJ complete with traffic sounds broadcast from a microphone setup near the highway and, as shown in the photo Mike Barer provided with his original post, my brother was photographed doing a remote broadcast for KUJ at a local business in Walla Walla. My brother’s zest for life included fly fishing, mountain climbing, and skydiving. He had an appreciation for great food and consumed it with gusto and appreciation. He was passionate about studying the word of God and being the best person he could be. He credited God’s answer to his prayers with sustaining his life long after doctors had predicted; death came two years to the day from when he was first assigned to hospice care and given only a few months to live. He died at age 68 on the morning after Christmas at Franciscan Hospice House, in University Place, WA, in 2008. He is buried in the Veterans’ Section at Hillcrest Burial Park, in Kent, WA.
—Jaynie Dillon Jones