Jerry & Wanda Hanszen
2025 Lifetime Achievement Award
(Published August 2025)
This story of TAB’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award is one of love.
Of teamwork…
Of hard work…
And adventure over a lifetime…together and with family.
Two drum majors, one dreaming of becoming a band director and falling in love with a Twirl-o-Jack with a beautiful head for business.
For 62 years, Wanda and Jerry Hanszen have been working hand in hand building businesses and communities and making legions of friends throughout the piney woods of East Texas.
A shared love for sports, music and the arts brought them the opportunity to acquire KGAS-AM in Carthage in 1988 where they’d been advertising their mobile home business and Jerry was doing color commentary and half-time coverage of high school football.
After picking up the local FM allotment, KGAS AM-FM got up and running – in a mobile home, doublewide! – just steps from Jerry’s childhood home.
There, Wanda and Jerry brought their love and life of bands, athletics, families and parents to the airwaves where KGAS and eventually KMHT in Marshall became the heartbeat of East Texas.
With high school sports and state band competitions at the center of life, the Hanszen’s stations embodied the localism that distinguishes local Radio and TV from the rest of the media marketplace.
They valued and respected their FCC licenses and shared their passions with TAB and eventually the NAB, serving on both boards to help advance the industry and protect our interests in the Texas Legislature, Congress and at the FCC.
Eventually serving as TAB Board Chairman in 1998 just 10 years after acquiring KGAS, Jerry was named Broadcaster of the Year in 2002.
Their love for Radio and for East Texas brought a second generation of family into the business when son-in-law Chris Paddie took the helm of KMHT and himself became TAB Board Chairman in 2015.
That legacy of leadership continues as the new GM of KMHT, Ashli Dansby, joined the TAB Executive Committee in 2025.
