Rockford Says Goodbye to a Media Icon, Mark Mayhew

Last night Rockford lost an amazing man and local media talent, Mark Mayhew.

Mark Mayhew died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack at his home Friday evening. Mayhew, was working as the assignment editor and producer at 13 WREX. Mark was a familiar voice on Rockford radio as a news anchor and show host for 1330 WNTA.

If you remember I wrote about Mark Mayhew back in September of 2016. He was told by a doctor to make some changes to better his health, and boy did he. This paragraph was from last September:

Mark now begins each day with a 4am one mile walk , and ends his night with around a two mile walk.  After open heart surgery, and changes to his life style Mark is in the best health he has been in, in years.

We lost Mark Mayhew Tuesday night, but the stories and smiles will live forever. Mark was such a wonderful man, and had a passion for life that made everyone around him enjoy their life even more.

I worked with Mark for quite a few years. We would talk pro wrestling, radio, working out (Mark was an amazing athlete in high school and college) and music. Here is my favorite personal Mark Mayhew story.

One day we were discussing song lyrics that just don't make sense. I brought up the Survivor song, "Eye of the Tiger". There is a line in the song that goes, "As the last lone survivor stalks his prey in the night". Think about that for a moment.

Mark tells me, I know the bass player from Survivor let's call him! So that is what we did, live on the air at WNTA. I questioned the bass player and SONG WRITER, about the strange lyrics. Needless to say the member of Survivor was not pleased or entertained by my questioning of one of the biggest pop/rock songs of all time.

After we finished the phone interview, we both sat there in the studio laughing so hard we were in tears. "Well that didn't exactly go as planned, huh". Mark was such a fun loving guy, that brought so many people smiles and laughter.

I will be traveling past Route 66 this weekend which was another passion of Marks. I'll be sure to keep the sunglasses on for that part of the trip.