Garofalo, Rick, 1953-

Dates

• Existence: 1953    

Biography

Richard C. (Rick) Garofalo was born in 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. In high school and college he made films with his friend John Musker, a member of Disney’s “Dream Team” and a fellow Northwestern alumni. Garofalo attended Loyola Academy, Wilmette, Illinois, for his secondary education and, between his junior and senior years at Loyola, participated in Northwestern’s National High School Institute (Speech Division), a summer enrichment program from promising students. After taking his high school diploma, he matriculated to Northwestern University in 1971. While a Northwestern student, Garofalo was active with WNUR, the student-run, campus radio station; University Theater; the Waa-Mu Show; and Phi Eta Sigma fraternity. During his senior year, Garofalo interned with Chicago broadcast station WGN’s engineering department. He graduated from Northwestern in 1975, taking a Bachelor of Science in Radio, Television and Film from the School of Speech.

After graduating from Northwestern, Garofalo began a career as a broadcast radio and television engineer at WGN Chicago, where he worked for 40 years until retiring in 2015. At WGN he broadcast a multitude of events including Cubs games at Wrigley Field, DePaul basketball games, country and state fairs, and even the Oscars. An expert in Chicago radio, in 2000 he lectured on Chicago radio in the 1960s at the Harold Washington Library as a part of the library’s series “Music in Chicago: An Aural History 1900-1999”. Throughout his career he occasionally wrote for Chuck Schaden’s Nostalgia Digest and Radio Guide and for Broadcast Engineering magazine.

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