Brownville mom aspires to career in talk radio

BANGOR – She often falls asleep listening to radio. Now, Greta Sproul of Brownville wants to be a part of it.

Sproul, 45, and the mother of three, has been in love with radio for years, particularly talk radio, and has described the medium as “the disembodied voice in the night.”

Now, as a second semester student at the New England School of Communications, an affiliate of Husson College, she is seeking a two-year associate of science degree with major interests in announcing and production.

“I would love to write and produce commercials for radio,” she said.

So keen is Sproul on the radio career opportunities that exist through NESCom that she has encouraged her son, Ian Bean, 25, to enroll at the school.

The two share at least one class together, in TV production, and that is both good and bad, according to Greta.

“If we are in the same class, I can easily check up on him to make sure he is going to class,” she said. However, if she is contributing to a class discussion and illustrates her point with a reference to her son’s likes or dislikes, Greta has found that Ian is quick to contradict her if she has misinterpreted him.

The enrollment at NESCom is another step in the career of the multitalented lady. Before going back to school – she attended the University of Maine for two years, majoring in English – Greta had been a drama coach, freelance writer, author, religious education director and a singer in the band Syntonic.

She made good use of her singing talent during NESCom’s annual trip to New York City, when class members attended the “Ali and Jack” television show.

“During the warm-up session prior to the show’s start, the audience was asked if anyone would like to come to the microphone. I volunteered and sang ‘Summertime,'” she said.

Although school is foremost in her priorities, Sproul hasn’t forgotten her other pursuits. She has a literary agent who is working to get her first novel published and she is working on a second one. She has a singing gig about once a month with a women’s trio called The Divines and still has time to be a wife and mother. Besides Ian, she and her husband are parents of Hilary Sproul, a student at the University of Southern Maine, and Travis Sproul, 12.

Sproul’s son, Ian, from an earlier marriage, has had his own fascinating career. After attending five different schools in the Bangor area and graduating from Hampden Academy, he went to Peru with a family friend who was setting up a school there.

Later he went to Denmark, where he attended a post-secondary school and played in various bands. At the school, a folk high school for over-18 students in Copenhagen, Ian took classes in film and photography. That, along with having been a 14-year-old disc jockey at radio station WNEB, has stimulated his interest in camera work at NESCom. He is seeking a two-year associate degree in broadcasting-film and news production.