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Blaire Feulner, longtime voice of KPCW, dies
Park City PARK-CITY | Oct 18, 2022
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 Blaire Feulner, shown in the 1980s, founded the public radio station KPCW in Park City and is credited with building the station. Feulner later in life became a transgender woman. She died on Sunday night. | Park City Historical Society & Museum
2008-13-4
Blaire Feulner, the founder of the KPCW public radio station in Park City, died last weekend, as the area lost a voice that many longtime Parkites considered to be as integral to the community conversation as those of politicians, business leaders and not-for-profit executives.
The radio station said Feulner died on Sunday night in Salt Lake City after suffering a stroke. She was 70.
KPCW President and General Manager Renai Bodley Miller and Roger Goldman, the chair of the radio station’s board of trustees, released a prepared statement on Tuesday praising the role Feulner played in shaping the station.
“All of us at KPCW are saddened to hear of the passing of our founder, Blaire Feulner. 42 years ago Blaire lit the spark of the community campfire that became KPCW. The station signed on the air on July 2, 1980, and ever since then has reported the stories that connect our community as well as the soundtrack of our lives. KPCW has grown from a radio station staffed by just a few people to a digital information delivery platform that serves listeners and readers on all seven continents. We are very grateful to Blaire and her wife Susan for laying the foundation for public, nonprofit media and music in the Park City community,” the statement said.
Sally Elliott, who served in elected office in Park City and Summit County, recalled “the insightful news coverage” of Feulner. She said she was close friends with Feulner but remembered interviews with Feulner while she was a public official were “always difficult.” Feulner encouraged her to run for the Park City Council in the 1980s, Elliott said.
“Blaire was just a very, very fine writer and she had a beautiful voice,” Elliott said.
Elliott said Feulner had an “amazing, encyclopedic understanding” of the Park City area and said Feulner saw “local news as critical to the development of a town.”
Feulner’s departure from KPCW in 2008 was a surprise to many in the community, but it came after what appeared at the time to be a difficult period for the relationship between himself and the radio station.
In July of that year, he announced he would likely be off the air for the next six months. The leadership of the not-for-profit radio station said then Feulner had resigned as Community Wireless of Park City’s president and remained on staff as an at-will basis. The board of trustees of the radio station ultimately confirmed Feulner was no longer associated with KPCW.
“Blair Feulner has done so much for the community by founding KPCW and nurturing it for 30 years into one of the nation’s highest regarded stations,” Bill Mullen, the president of the board of trustees at the time, said. “While it is always difficult to see a founder and icon step aside, the KPCW team is very strong and fully staffed, and now we’ve moved into a great new studio and are truly ready for a new day in our new digs.”
Many in the community continued to associate Feulner with the radio station throughout the rest of her life. She became a transgender woman after leaving KPCW. In the middle of 2020, Feulner wrote a Guest Editorial for The Park Record commemorating the 40th anniversary of the radio station’s founding. “As one of the persons most responsible for creating KPCW (along with Susan Feulner), I’m pleased to report Park City’s home-grown radio station has kept the flame of local news and information burning brightly since the night (8 p.m. on July 2, 1980) I signed it on the air,” Feulner said in the guest editorial. “The year I set out to invent KPCW (1978) Park City was still a busted old mining ‘camp’ with more people working underground at the Ontario Mine than working above ground at the ski area. The town’s adult population would have fit into the yet-to-be built Eccles auditorium, leaving the balcony empty.”
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Erin Bogarte
I'm hearbroken. We reconnected a couple of years ago; I'm so glad we got to see each other. Blaire was so kind, brilliant and fun. I think interacting with other people on a personal basis cost Blaire; she was sometimes afraid of saying the wrong thing. She was writing a comprehensive history of Park City, full of fascinating stories about people from the time when it was just a mining town. I'm not sure anyone knew more about the history.
Blaire, I will miss you very much. I thought we would have more time together.
Mark Brim
Very Sad to hear about Blair.
She was a Best Friend & Best Man at my wedding (1st). I enjoyed working together as we started to layout the plans for KCPW in the late 70's. That devotion to Park City and It's residents was a singular commitment to be envied. We enjoyed some very good memories together and I will miss her dearly. Our lives grew apart in the 90's, but I'll never forget the good times we enjoyed. I support and respect her decision to be true to her self. Farewell my friend, I wish we could have traveled to Australia.
Mark Brim
Paul Beck
Blair was a class act and a good froend from the time were just young. He was a class act and will be missed
Allen Mathisen
Very sad to hear of Blaire's passing. Friends since childhood, I was stunned when I first heard his radio voice on KMOR. Although we lost contact sometime in the 70's, I'd occasionally hear that voice on the radio and was glad to know Blaire was out there somewhere enjoying some celebrity. I was moved to get out the grade school and high school photos and reminisce about our friendship and misadventures long ago. What a fierce accordian player - and for a time, a budding scientist. The world is a smaller place now. Fare well, my friend.
(Max) Glen Worthington
I am saddened by the passing of Blair and remembering his focus for all things technical. I first met Blair at Olympus Jr. High, where experiments with fruitflies and then studying to get Ham radio licenses were there with a group of 8, many who continued on in communications. I was reminded today by a 'new" article I saw online, on plants having feelings and remember Blair hooking up plants to an ohm meter and killing Brine Shrimp a room away to see if the plants reacted (they did) along with electronic anethesia experiments where putting a signal generators contacts on his head and watch his eyes flutter.
While I lost personal contact after High School, I was able to follow Blair in the news, with the various radio stations he was involved with. We lost a great soul, but will I always remember Blair.
Renee Hilpert
Like so many others, I, too, was saddened to hear of Blair/Blaire’s passing. I was sorry to have missed crossing paths at the 2021 Reunion; I’m doubly sorry now.
Having attended different elementary schools, I first grew to know Blaire in seventh grade when my toe shoes and I entered the Olympus Jr. High talent show. Blaire (and those accordion skills) entered as an individual presentation. Given my party consisted of three others (all of whom were ninth graders), my entry was in the within the ninth-grade cluster. I just appeared out of nowhere…where did Renee come from?
Ultimately succeeding into the finals, my group didn’t win but were selected to join the “traveling assembly.” Blair(e) was also an assembly inductee. We’d never met before. I recall the billing: “Giuseppe Fuelner and his traveling accordion;” my seventh-grade mind wondered, “could that a real name?…it just doesn’t sound right.”
Ballet West consumed most of my “spare” time throughout high school. As I recall, Blair(e) and other Olympus colleagues took part in stage crew, both with the company and at OHS. I was always grateful for the kind performance support.
I hope she and Susan created amazing memories to aid in this difficult transition.
With warm recollections,
Renee Hilpert
Barbara Ebert (Gutke)
I've enjoyed KPCW for many years and was delighted to learn that Blaire was the inspiration for the station.