Community remembers business woman

KLID co-owner Dolores “Sunny” E. Skidmore, 93, of Poplar Bluff, died Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022 at Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center. Her family service Aug. 18 was in her hometown of Evansville, Illinois, but her area friends will celebrate her life Saturday.

Wonderful, remarkable lady, unique and an Energizer Bunny are ways friends, coworkers and business associates described Skidmore, who moved to Poplar Bluff in the mid-1980s.

A Day of Remembrance and Prayer Service with a dinner will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday at Loving Jesus Ministries Inc., 2663 Thomas St. Everyone is invited to attend.

Scott Innes, the voice of Scooby Doo, started his radio career as a teenager working with her locally.

“I love Sunny Skidmore,” Innes said. “She was different. I have to be honest of all other people I worked for in my radio career, she was the most unique. If there was an award for most unique people in the radio business, Sunny Skidmore gets it hands down.”

Skidmore didn’t sleep, Innes recalls, “I would pop into the radio station at 3 in the morning, there would be Sunny recording a spot.”

Innes would ask wasn’t she going to get some sleep. She’d says, “when you get my age, you don’t want to go to sleep. I’ll probably have time to do that when I’m dead and gone. Right now, I’m living. I got jobs to do.”

He recalls, “She was a hustler. I’ve worked with a lot of people. She worked for everything she had. She went out and she wheeled and dealed. I was really impressed by her in this crazy business.

“You respect people that really love the business and Sunny loved the business. I honestly think she would have done it free. The secret even today we love this with a passion. Sunny loved people. I was a young kid coming up in this business. She would go out and sell. I was selling too and we would share ideas.”

During one visit, he was looking for something. She told him, it as on her desk. Searching, he found a black and white autographed photo of himself from his days at KLID.

“That was back when I was 16 or 15, when I thought I gotta have my own celebrity pictures. I signed it to Sunny. I walk into her office and I’m going ‘God, Sunny have you ever cleaned this desk off?’ I was digging around on her desk on one corner is my picture from 1985. I said, ‘Oh my goodness. Sunny. It’s like 40 years old.’ She says, “Oh, I know. But, I always knew you’d amount to something. So I never wanted to throw it away.

“She was just a peach. She definitely had good times. She was a great person and truly going to be missed and she’s in a better place.”

Skidmore often told Innes, “I’m just gonna buy this place one day.”

“I was in Springfield, Missouri working and I got a call. She says, ‘I bought it.’ I said you bought what? She said the radio station. I’m already moving up the ladder and she says, ‘Scott, would you ever consider coming back and working?’ I said no way! She’s like, well, maybe we can syndicate you. She’s definitely going to be missed.”

Station manager Jerry Evans worked for her 26 years.

Evans described time “with Sunny has been like a big family, and now that Sunny is gone, it’s like big parts are gone of the family.”

Evans worked with Skidmore after she had her legs amputated and lived in a skilled nursing and rehab facility. He helped her two days before she died in making work-related call. He promised her he would do what he could to keep her dream alive.

Steve Whitworth of Whitworth’s Gift Chest Jewelers and director of the Margaret Harwell Art Museum called Skidmore “a fixture in our life for 30 years.”

“I am thrilled I have this opportunity to say what a wonderful person she was, how her indomitable spirit inspired us and how grateful we are to have had her in our lives,” Whitworth said.

Whitworth was concerned about Skidmore after her amputation, but it didn’t slow her down.

“What a work ethic and in this day and age, to have that indomitable spirit of Sunny Skidmore, to aspire to live up to ... what a remarkable lady. She was wonderful, remarkable lady. ... She was working until she died.”

Whitworth said it was her life to keep the radio station going and keep relationships.

When the community had the Black River Music Festival, Skidmore used her connections in Nashville to provide the talent show winners opportunities for auditions.

For many years, Skidmore’s radio station broadcast area high school games from various schools such as Puxico and Neelyville and followed all of the Three Rivers Raiders sporting event.

Evans said, Skidmore’s community involvement decreased as her health declined.

Skidmore was born Jan. 18, 1929, in Evansville. She loved music and radio and learned to play the fiddle and the guitar. She worked in banking in the late 1940s, then taught school before the love of country music drew her to Nashville, where she worked for an “up and coming” Faron Young in the 1950s. Radio was something she wanted to explore, so she settled in Beeville, Texas, as one of the first women DJs and became Sunny. In 1967, Hurricane Beulah hit the area, and she was received awards for her excellent reporting. Skidmore continued in radio in Canton, Ohio, before moving to Poplar Bluff.