From the Microphone to the Community: Dirk Nadon Reflects on Warren Bailey and 45 Years of the Children’s Auction

Long before Dirk Nadon owned Lakes Media, he was a young broadcaster learning what local radio could accomplish from someone who would eventually become one of his closest friends and mentors.

That person was Warren Bailey.

Bailey gave Nadon his first radio job in the 1980s, beginning a relationship that would span decades and become closely intertwined with the history of the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction. At the time, community fundraising looked much different than it does today. Nadon remembers participating in Santa Fund broadcasts, collecting new toys during his midday radio show and taking part in local efforts that were often centered around individual radio events.

Over time, many of those efforts began to come together, and Bailey saw both the growing need in the community and the opportunity local radio had to respond to it.

“He knew how to harness the power of local radio,” Nadon said. “I kind of became swept up in it.”

Nadon has watched the Children’s Auction evolve from its earliest days into something far larger than what could ever fit inside a radio studio. He remembers fundraising from storefronts and seeing the event move through increasingly larger venues as participation grew.

“Warren did what he could do with what he had,” Nadon said. “To see it go from the back of a van to a storefront, to a country club, to an event center, there were constraints that had to be solved, and Warren made it look easy.”

In the early years, Nadon spent time on the air, but much of his work eventually moved behind the scenes as the Auction became more technically complex. One milestone that still stands out to him came at the Opechee Conference Center, when the Auction surpassed $100,000 for the first time.

“We were wondering how we were ever going to beat it the next year,” he said.

They did, and the total continued to grow.

For Nadon, that growth says as much about the community as it does about the event itself. Over the years, the Auction became part of people’s annual routines. Volunteers began taking vacation time from their regular jobs just to help. Families came back year after year. Students, broadcasters, businesses, and community members all found their own place within it.

“It surprised Warren how much love, effort and money went into it,” Nadon said. “It’s one thing to raise funds or collect items for another organization. Creating the organization and maintaining it is a whole other thing.”

Nadon’s relationship with Bailey also changed as the years passed. When they first met, Nadon was a high school student who had landed a job talking on the radio, while Bailey was the adult trying to keep a group of young broadcasters in line.

“It was almost like a teacher-student relationship,” Nadon said.

As Nadon grew older, Bailey became more than a boss. When Nadon later purchased his father’s final radio station, Bailey became an important mentor, particularly at a time when locally owned media was becoming increasingly rare.

“He understood everything local,” Nadon said.

Bailey was a strong advocate for local media and for the role broadcasters could play in strengthening their communities. Over time, the relationship between the two men became deeply personal.

Nadon had the privilege of bringing Bailey to an awards ceremony when he received recognition from the Lakes Region Tourism Association, and he remained close to him through illness and adversity. The relationship had come full circle. Nadon had once been the young broadcaster Bailey tried to keep in line; years later, he became one of the people Bailey most wanted to talk with.

“When people ask me what I miss the most, every day it’s Warren I think about,” Nadon said.

One lesson from Bailey has stayed with him throughout his career.

“Warren always told me, ‘Use the power of a microphone for good,’” Nadon said. “At Lakes FM, we live by that.”

Bailey had begun his career in news, and Nadon believes he had an instinctive understanding of how radio could connect people. He paid attention to what the community needed, tried new ideas, and watched how people responded.

“He never really explained it to me,” Nadon said. “He demonstrated it.”

That philosophy became part of the foundation of the Children’s Auction.

Asked what role local radio played in helping the Auction grow, Nadon does not hesitate.

“It made it,” he said.

Without Bailey picking up a microphone and speaking directly to the Lakes Region, Nadon believes the Auction as the community knows it today would not exist. Radio allowed the event to reach people wherever they happened to be — in vehicles, homes, workplaces and businesses throughout the region.

Someone driving could listen. Someone at work could hear a coworker appear on the broadcast. Someone interested in an item could stay connected to what was happening without standing in front of the Auction boards.

“Radio is the ultimate relationship medium,” Nadon said. “This event is a testament to that.”

For him, that connection is part of what separates communities like the Lakes Region from larger markets. Local radio does not simply broadcast into a community; it becomes part of the community itself.

That connection has continued through Lakes Media and Lakes FM. Nadon said Lakes FM has served as a broadcast home for the Auction for roughly the past decade or more, but eventually he realized the stations’ support did not have to begin and end with Auction week.

He remembers the Jerry Lewis telethon and similar fundraising broadcasts that Bailey admired. The event itself might have taken place over a single weekend, but it represented months of preparation and community effort.

About a decade ago, Nadon began thinking about the Children’s Fund in the same way.

“It didn’t have to only be three or four days a year on the radio,” he said. “We could support all of the events throughout the year that support the larger Fund.”

Lakes Media doubled down on that relationship, promoting Fund events throughout the year and helping build awareness long before December.

“If you do something and don’t promote it, it doesn’t work,” Nadon said.

That year-round relationship was visible again recently at the Laconia Pumpkin Festival, where Lakes Media partnered with the Children’s Fund around its 50/50 raffle.

For Nadon, that kind of ongoing support reflects what Bailey understood decades earlier: community participation is built long before the microphones turn on during Auction week.

After 45 years, Nadon believes the reason the Children’s Auction continues is surprisingly simple.

“Need and goodwill,” he said.

There are organizations throughout the Lakes Region doing important work that cannot meet every need on their own. At the same time, there are people throughout the community willing to help them.

“The Fund has become so strong because it has that small-town attitude and people who have goodwill,” Nadon said. “If there wasn’t a need, people wouldn’t show up. If there wasn’t goodwill, they wouldn’t show up either.”

The Fund succeeds because both exist.

One thing Nadon wishes more people understood is how much of what they see and hear each December is made possible by people who are not being paid to be there. Many volunteers take time away from their regular jobs, using vacation days they could spend elsewhere and instead choosing to spend them helping with the Auction.

Students often arrive through school audio and video programs, but Nadon said many of them become invested in something larger than the assignment that first brought them there.

“These people aren’t paid,” he said. “They want to be there.”

Over the years, Nadon has heard that commitment expressed in a simple way by volunteers who return again and again.

“It wouldn’t be Christmas for me if I wasn’t here doing this,” he recalled people saying.

That feeling, he said, helps explain why so many volunteers continue returning year after year. The Auction and the Fund becomes part of their lives, and when they are not there, it can feel like something is missing.

Looking toward the future, Nadon keeps his hopes simple.

“As Warren said, all we want to do is one dollar more than the year before,” he said.

Of course, everyone involved would like to raise much more than that, but for Nadon the larger point is continued momentum. As long as there is need in the community and generosity from the people who live there, the Fund has a reason to keep moving forward.

For him, one of the most meaningful parts of Bailey’s story is that he had the chance to see what his idea became.

Bailey watched an effort that once involved only a few thousand dollars in toys to grow into an institution capable of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and supporting organizations throughout the Lakes Region.

“He saw it go from a few thousand dollars in toys in the back of a truck to what it is today,” Nadon said.

He saw volunteers return year after year. He saw businesses step forward. He saw generations of broadcasters, students, and community members become part of what he started.

And Nadon believes Bailey knew the Fund would continue without him.

“In his mind, I think he knew it would go on,” Nadon said. “He knew it would continue and grow.”

Not everyone gets to see the full impact of something they helped create. Warren Bailey did.

Forty-five years later, every December when the microphones go live, volunteers take their places and another community comes together to help its neighbors, part of his legacy is still present.

Use the power of the microphone for good. The Lakes Region is still listening.

Help support the next 45 years

As the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Fund celebrates 45 years, the $45K for 45 Years Campaign is helping ensure the organization can continue supporting local children, families and nonprofit partners for years to come.

Learn more about the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Fund, the Children’s Auction and ways to support its mission at ChildrensFundNH.org.

This article was written Brendon Beetle. 

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