Broadcaster
Keeps a Lifelong
Promise to
Ol’ Blue Eyes
S BY HILARY DANAILOVA
Sid Mark had never held a golf club or driven a convertible.

But growing up in 1940s Camden, N.J., he was convinced that his
ticket to that glamorous lifestyle was a career in broadcasting.

“You wear a beautiful suit, you go play golf and then you get in
your beautiful car and you hang out all night with beautiful ladies,”
explained Mark. “I thought that’s what radio was.”



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Sid Mark
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Now 85 and an honoree in the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers
Hall of Fame, he knows better.

So did Mark’s parents, who had other ideas for their son, born
Sidney Mark Fliegelman. Strictly Orthodox Jews, they expected
him to follow his father and uncles into the family clothing busi-
ness and become a pillar of the synagogue where “my dad had the
fi rst row, fi rst seat,” Mark recalled.

Th e would-be retailer ended up with a diff erent kind of front
row seat — to the career of Frank Sinatra, whose music he has
championed for decades as host of “Sounds of Sinatra,” one of the
longest-running broadcasts in radio history. Mark’s WPHT 1210
AM program, a staple of the Philadelphia airwaves since 1957, is
nationally syndicated on 100 stations.

And although Sinatra has been dead for 20 years, his popularity
endures. Mark still gets at least 100 emails a week, “and they all
start off the same way: ‘I started listening on Sunday mornings,
while Mom and Dad were making gravy,’” he said. Th e Villanova
resident loves relating how in the 1970s, Mayor Frank Rizzo
complained that the power dipped across Philadelphia as radios
switched on to hear Mark’s show.

Podcasts and satellite have transformed the business, but Mark
eschews digital conveniences, preferring to play each recording
himself. “It gives me a warmer feeling; I can set the mood better,”
said the AM veteran. “Everything I play is for a reason.”
Th at reason is Sinatra, who Mark has been playing his way for
more than six decades. “I haven’t been on vacation for 20 years,
because I don’t want anyone else doing the show,” he admitted. “It’s
like someone dating your girl. I tell my wife” — Judy, with whom
Mark shares a 45-year marriage and four grown children — “that
I’ve been having an aff air all this time … with the show.”
Steps from live jazz and classical concerts.

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SEE SID MARK | Page 14
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM THE GOOD LIFE
DECEMBER 20, 2018
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