Cynthia Doyon dead at 48: She hosted KUOW’s ‘Swing Years’, notes the P-I.

I’m really bummed out. Ms. Doyon is an apparent suicide.

She was the Saturday evening host of a retro radio show, “The Swing Years and Beyond,” and I have spent many Saturday nights happily learning about that era of American popular music in this gracious and knowledgeable woman’s virtual company.

Each Saturday, she opened the show with a slightly cheesy, deliberately old-fashioned audio montage of the sound of waves lapping shore over the show’s theme.

“The Swing Years and Beyond” was the only radio show devoted to music in the region that I responded strongly to. Ms. Doyon’s encyclopedic knowledge of her subjects and the self-effacing sense of humor that she brought to her broadcasts filled my home with joy on many Saturday nights.

I also noticed over the years that when I was up overnight, so was she: her voice was by far the most likely to host overnight shifts at KUOW, and without realizing it, I guess I had begun to consider her a part of my life – just a voice on the radio, but a friend, someone else who knew how to greet the dawn after a night of work, reading, or the black black.

I should note that I more-or-less never watch any television but nearly always have a radio on. Radio fills the same place in my life that the tube does for the great majority of my fellow inhabitants of the United States.

I am posting this before I go to sleep. In my certain sleeplessness I will envy her current peace. There’s a hole in my life. I’m sure it will close quickly for me. May it heal with speed for those closer to Ms. Doyon.

UPDATE: a few days later, I posted this entry, and both draw comments, so I’ve decided to link them.

UPDATE II: In January, 2004, the Seattle Weekly published a piece on suicide and led with Ms. Doyon’s last moments. There’s a lovely phptp of her accompanying the article, and that photo is also the magazine’s cover for the issue.