Steve McCoy, a hugely popular Atlanta radio deejay in the 1980s into the 2000s, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and friends are holding a fundraiser for him to help with with financial issues related to caring for him.
McCoy, 69, has been battling Parkinson’s for more than 15 years and it has taken a toll on both his personal well being and his savings.
Vikki Locke, his longtime co-host when he worked at Star 94 from 1990 to 2007, is helping to organize Stand-Up for Steve McCoy Against Parkinson’s, a fundraiser set for Sunday, Aug. 27, at the Punchline Comedy Club in Buckhead. Tickets are available at $75 at Punchline.com.
Parkinson’s, which causes unintended or uncontrollable movements and progressively gets worse over time, has stripped McCoy of his ability to speak in that dulcet radio voice his fans knew and loved.
“His voice has been stolen,” Locke told Richard Eldredge on his EldredgeATL blog. “Hard to believe, this radio legend can no longer tell me corny jokes and I really miss that.”
This past Sunday, Atlanta journalist and family friend Jaye Watson started a GoFundMe page for McCoy with a goal to raise an additional $50,000. McCoy’s wife Linda Terrana agreed to the page as long as half the money went to a non-profit organization that provides financial support for caregiving. (The group that will get that money is the Atlanta Neuroscience Foundation, which oversees neurological programs, research projects, and quality-of-life patient care.)
“Steve’s nights are filled with violent tremors and sweating,” Watson wrote. “He has lost his famous radio voice and at best can whisper on some days. His hospital bed is set up so that he can look out his window and see the trees.”
Locke told Watson: “To see his body broken like this is gut-wrenching. Steve has two great loves: his family first, and radio. Entertaining Atlanta for decades gave him great joy as did helping the community. Now it’s our turn to give back.”
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Watson said she read Eldredge’s column and realized she couldn’t physically make the fundraiser. So she came up with the idea of doing the GoFundMe page instead. She is friends with Terrana but did not realize how difficult the situation had become for her and her husband.
“This is a man who gave his most vital, healthiest decades of his life to a calling: making people’s mornings a little bit brighter,” Watson said. “He did that tirelessly. I hope if people knew how hard things are now, they’d want to help a man who made them smile and laugh for years.”
Terrana described the myriad of costs to take care of her husband over the years and how it has drained their savings. She noted how much money as a radio host McCoy raised for various charities while at Star and “it’s extremely touching to know that listeners in the city that Steve loves want to help him now in this time of need.”
Watson said Terrana “never envisioned they’d be in this position. They did everything right saving money. But diseases like these can drain even the biggest of bank accounts.”
McCoy while in Atlanta also worked at the top 40 station Z93 in the 1980s and briefly for B98.5 and Talk 106.7.
By Friday evening, 881 people had donated more than $54,000, exceeding the initial $50,000 goal. Watson has since raised the goal to $100,000 on the GoFundMe page.
His former employer Star 94 has been running PSAs about the fundraiser as well.
