'He believed in local news': Former KSFR news director brought dedication, passion to job

Yahoo

20-05-2025

William "Bill" Dupuy's love of local news started early.
Growing up in Baton Rouge, La., Dupuy was just 11 or 12 when, according to family lore, he convinced his father to put an antenna on the roof of their house so he could pipe in straight to the neighbors' radios.
Bill Dupuy
Bill Dupuy
"He'd find something to say," said Dupuy's wife, Ellen Dupuy, laughing in a recent interview. "He'd do the news or something."
Dupuy landed a job in radio a few years later, and while his career took him from broadcast to the worlds of the military, scientific research and big business, he eventually made a return to the airwaves, taking a job as news director of Santa Fe-based public radio station KSFR.
"It was kind of a ... dream role for him," son Max Dupuy said. "He got a lot out of the people working at KSFR, and also I think contributed a lot."
Dupuy, who stepped down from that position in 2013, died April 12 following a stroke at his Santa Fe home. He was 84.
Communication was a through-line for Texas-born and Louisiana-raised Dupuy, who worked at a Houston radio station out of college before joining the U.S. Air Force and serving as a public information officer, according to his obituary. He was a captain by the time he left the military in the 1960s.
That was about the time he first met his future wife, during a night out on the town in San Francisco, Ellen Dupuy said.
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Bill Dupuy, former news director at KSFR public radio station in Santa Fe.
Ellen Dupuy's roommate at the time was about to return home to England. Inspired by an article about the "swingingest spots" in various cities, the two decided to go for a farewell drink — only to find the place packed and themselves "immediately surrounded by some nice gentlemen." But it was another gentleman who caught Ellen Dupuy's eye: the one walking back and forth through the bar.
"Brazen me, I put my hand across the bar and I ... said, 'If you go by one more time, you're going to have pay a toll,' " said Ellen Dupuy, who at the time had just stepped away from her job as a flight stewardess. "... He looked at me, I looked at him, and here we were 57 years later."
It was a spark, but it lasted through decades, multiple moves and career changes, two children — son Max and daughter Nikki — and, eventually, three grandchildren.
"The way he was with his wife, you would have thought they were newlyweds for 50 years or however long," said Zélie Pollon, a former colleague from KSFR.
Bill Dupuy's post-Air Force job for Kaiser Industries took him to New York City — a lively chapter for the young couple as they "wined and dined" people on behalf of the company.
"We were in our 20s with a nice large expense account," Ellen Dupuy said. "So we'd go out to all the great restaurants and theater."
Eventually Dupuy moved on to a job doing public relations for Plymouth State College — now Plymouth State University — in New Hampshire. From there he took another communications job even further up the coast of New England, at The Jackson Laboratory, a cancer research institute on Mount Desert Island in Maine.
The time in Maine was fulfilling, Ellen Dupuy said, but eventually came to an end.
"After years up on Mount Desert Island, we decided it was probably time for Bill to get back into corporate life again, because ... we had kids going to college, things like that," she said.
Bill Dupuy took a job in Cleveland, Ohio, at Edward Howard, a large public relations firm, and later another job as a senior executive at a regional bank, his obituary said.
It was a friend from Cleveland living in New Mexico, according to Ellen Dupuy, who eventually paved the Dupuys' way to Santa Fe in about 1999. The friend wanted to come back to Ohio to see her children, and proffered a house swap vacation. Bill Dupuy was unenthused.
"I dragged Bill out here kicking and screaming," Ellen Dupuy said. "But the minute he got out here, we both fell in love with it."
So much so, she said, that by the end of the vacation, they'd fulfilled the ultimate vacation fantasy.
"We purchased a little house on Delgado at the end of the two weeks," Ellen Dupuy said. "... It's one of the best choices we ever made."
Bill Dupuy opted to take an early retirement at the time of the move to New Mexico, but it didn't suit. At his wife's urging to "do something," he took a science writing job at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Then, Ellen Dupuy said, he spotted a notice in The New Mexican for a volunteer role at KSFR and decided to go see about it.
"That was it," Ellen Dupuy said. "No more laboratory. Total dedication to KSFR."
During Bill Dupuy's years as news director, Ellen Dupuy said, he built KSFR's news team into a force, albeit a volunteer one.
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Bill Dupuy, former news director at KSFR public radio station in Santa Fe.
"People were going out interviewing," she said. "We had people at the city meetings. We had people at the Legislature. I mean, he believed in local news."
Steve Terrell, a KSFR host and former longtime newspaper writer for both The New Mexican and the Albuquerque Journal, said in 2004 when he was sent to the Republican and Democratic national conventions as a political reporter, Bill Dupuy recruited him to record short features to bring the events to life for local listeners.
"He took his job very seriously," Terrell said. "He was very serious about the news."
Dupuy's second retirement went about as well as his first one. When he departed KSFR, Ellen Dupuy said, he converted a closet in the garage into a studio and began auditioning to narrate audiobooks, which he intoned in his classic radio broadcaster voice. He helped facilitate Journey Santa Fe events, bringing panels of speakers on a wide array of topics to the Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse. Together the couple took to delivering food during COVID-19 for local nonprofit Kitchen Angels.
Son Max Dupuy, who lives in Washington, D.C., said for the last two decades, his father was driven above all by a passion for his final adopted hometown.
"He loved Santa Fe, he really did," Max Dupuy said. "I know it's easy to say that, and a lot of people say that, but he loved it and contributed to it."