Nancy Travers ’86 held multiple titles at WKWI: programming director, DJ, morning host and marketing director.
“She cued up the tracks, worked the boards, sold the ads,” said her son, Travers Eubank. “You’d have an easier time listing the things she didn’t do.”
For 18 years, Travers worked at the radio station in Kilmarnock, on Virginia’s Northern Neck. “She embraced everyone and everything in our community,” her daughter, AnnGardner Eubank, said. “She considered her listeners her friends, and many of her clients also became her friends.”
Travers died of lung cancer on Jan. 25, 2022. She was 58. She retired in 2021 after receiving her diagnosis. But until the last week of her life, “she was still in communication with them every single day about ads or helping new people learn how to sell them,” her son said.
After graduating from Old Dominion 91Ƶ, where she double majored in English and communication, Travers worked at North Carolina stations, including Beach FM, Dixie 105.7 and 102.5 The Shark.
At WKWI, Travers announced the news headlines every morning. After a while, “she felt she was starting everyone’s day off on a negative note,” AnnGardner Eubank said. “So she came up with the idea of ‘the good news story of the day.’
She would highlight the kindness of others. That’s what made people tune in consistently.”
That spirit also guided Travers’ final year. “She became even more grateful every single day,” her daughter said. “She could spend that year agonizing over what was to come, but she chose to enjoy it. Her positivity was unmatched.”
“One of her biggest gifts to us,” her son said, “was the ability to appreciate a ton of different music.” He recalled riding in the car as a young boy, his mother “playing (rapper) Trick Daddy so loud that the car shook.”
Travers was “incredibly patient and accepting, and she grew more so as time went on,” her son said. “She grew to understand us and our eccentricities more, and she didn’t miss a beat.”
Travers’ daughter added: “She had two kids, but she was a mom to a whole lot more. She was a lot of people’s safe space, a lot of people’s comfort and voice of reason. She was there for everyone.”