Colonel Mason PO Box 548, Lewisville, TX 75067 Studio 214-329-4949 [email protected] www.PromiseOfTomorrow.biz

Born Robert Frederick Mason in Detroit, Michigan, Jan. 19, 1944. Celebrated 50th year in broadcasting in 2014. Colonel became a professional broadcast name in the 1960s, several years before the U.S. Army hired Mason to be a broadcast spokesman for the All Volunteer Army in 1975, at which time the Army made Mason an honorary colonel in the St. Louis Recruiting Command. Award-winning Career Journalist; Speaker; Author; Writer; Events Producer; international ScienceNews Radio Network Host/Producer; Knight of the Nanotech Institute, University of Texas at Dallas; Press Relations Chair volunteer for many IEEE Conferences, Press & Communications officer for Total Tactical Defence, Inc. Produced international nanotechnology conferences and trade expositions in Dallas, Texas: nanoTX ’06, nanoTX ’07, and nanotxUSA 2008 (in cooperation with Nano Tech Japan); and other expos for the entertainment and construtions industries • Since 2007 producer and host of The Proimise of Tomorrow (www.PromiseOfTomorrow) radio program for the ScienceNews Radio Network, covering the business of Open Innovation, Emerging Technologies, Energy, Defense, and Nanotech. Most recently reported on the so-called Climategate Scandal several months before the mainstream press and other outlets woke up to the story, and often is first to break science news. • Produced an exhaustive four-part series on climate change for the ScienceNews Radio Network • Executive Producer of award-winning documentary on the lives and careers of the late Nobel Laureates Jack Kilby, inventor of the microchip; and Rick Smalley, father of modern day nanotechnology • Career as an investigative reporter in both print and broadcast began in Detroit, Michigan in 1964, and in addition career includes the markets of St. Louis, Kansas City, Dallas/Fort Worth • Author of Those Roaring Riverboat Years, a history of the steamboat era; and FAX Justice (how to collect from unwanted faxes). Authored scores of documentaries and editorials for broadcast, and thousands of words in commercial copy. Author and director of five murder mystery dinner plays Hobbies and interests include: Sailing/yachting, historical research, creative writing. Endowed member of A. C. Garrett Masonic Lodge; Past Worthy Patron, The Colony Chapter Order of Eastern Star; member National Rifle Association; Society of Professional Journalists

Some admirers comment:

	“(I have) appreciation for your open minded attitude to learning and formidable communication skills.”  

The late Dr. Stephen Schneider, Nobel Laureate, professor and senior fellow, Stanford University

“You are doing God’s work,” Stan Ovshinsky, historic American scientist and inventor.

“The things you are doing to educate the public in the importance of science are vital.” Dr. Ray Baughman, Director Nanotech Institute, University of Texas-Dallas

ScienceNews Radio Network Colonel Mason is a science news reporter and managing editor of the ScienceNews Radio Network (SNRN) headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Mason is executive producer, editor, host and chief talent of the science news/talk radio program, Promise of Tomorrow with Colonel Mason.

Programming is provided free of charge to all interested radio stations worldwide, before being Webcast, in a format designed to be particularly useful and attractive to public radio, distributed by file transfer protocol (ftp). Each hour-long program runs 50 minutes, allowing stations 10 minutes to insert local programming or spots/ PSAs. Then programs are archived and Webcast online for a world audience:

All programming is pre-recorded as lively and spontaneously as possible, but allows for edits of government sensitive or otherwise classified secret information. Still, the program has broken many news stories is advance of the so-called mainstream press. It was nearly three months early in reporting Climategate, and a year ahead in reporting domestic US government drone surveillance, among other scoops.

SNRN has a network of correspondents and news hawks who feed tips and news stories daily from various world spots to the Dallas news center where they are gleaned for accuracy and content before any plans for broadcast.

The Promise of Tomorrow radio broadcasts originated in Dallas, Texas, in 2007 as an exclusive feature on talk radio KMNY 1360 AM. In 2010 the program was recognized with the IEEE-USA Literary Award, and again in 2011 with the AAES Journalism Award (Some past winners of these awards include: Chicago Tribune, FORTUNE Magazine, Knight-Ridder News Service, Washington Post, etc.)

HISTORY Colonel Mason (1944 - ) born Robert Frederick Mason in Detroit Michigan to Don and Grace Mason of Royal Oak, Michigan, the youngest of four children. Being born during the height of the Second World War, his mother thought it amusing to call the little boy by a military nick-name. “My father wanted to call me General Desolation,” muses Mason, “and my mother wanted to call me Major Screw-up, so they settled in the middle on Colonel.”

Almost immediately Mason was taught drama by his mother, an elocution teacher, and by age 12 began learning creative writing from his highly educated father.

Mason attended early grades in Royal Oak, Michigan, but graduated Gwinn High School in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where his father, a Registered Professional Electrical Engineer, was assigned to K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base implementing advanced defense programs during the Cold War.

After a study of liberal arts at a college in North Carolina, Mason brought back his drama and writing skills to begin a broadcasting career in 1964 at WOMC-FM/WEXL-AM, owned and operated by Sparks Broadcasting Corporation in Detroit, Michigan. Mason later became evening news editor at WJBK, a 50,000 watt Storer radio station in Detroit, and affiliated with Channel 2 in that same city. Mason played an important role as a street reporter feeding the networks in the midst of all the action during the Detroit riots of 1967, and again in the 1968 turmoil that erupted after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1970 Mason went on the road to study the counterculture that emerged in protest to the Viet Nam War, but by 1973 was back at a radio news desk in the St. Louis, Missouri, area covering events as the Watergate scandal unfolded. During this time Mason aired a series of reports that culminated in an audio documentary exposing deplorable prison conditions where hard core inmates were killing three-to-fivers at the rate of one a month. The reports resulted in major reforms at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City.

What followed was a stint as News Director at WYBR in Rockford, Illinois; then as news-talk radio host at WGNU St. Louis, Missouri, where Mason uncovered corruption at the city’s convention center that contributed to the arrest and conviction of the facility’s director of operations on bribery and racketeering changes.

A freelance announcing career represented by the Peggy Taylor talent agency in Dallas offered a break from staff work and allowed Mason to write, voice, and produce the historic audio book Those Roaring Riverboat Years with local Dallas audio engineer Lynn Crochet. Later, while a talk show reporter at KDNT in the D/FW market, Mason uncovered child abuse in a local school by a teacher. Children were being kept behind locked doors in a hidden room in a high school of the Lewisville (Texas) Independent School District. Mason, at age 50, was later convicted of a class B misdemeanor for physically assaulting the 26 year old wrestling coach responsible for the abuse. “He was on his knees begging for mercy when I caught him abusing the kids,” Mason told his radio audience at the time. Mason said the coach pleaded with him “please don’t hit me again, I won’t treat no kids badly no more,” but Mason said “that only made me more angry so I smacked him again.”

By the late 1990s Mason wanted to change from hard investigative reporting to science news as being less taxing on him physically. That led Mason in 2006 to promote and produce the most successful nanotechnology conference/expo held in the US up to that time, at the Dallas convention center. For that he was inducted into knighthood of the Nanotechnology Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas by its director, Dr. Ray Baughman. Two similar nanotech conferences followed in 2007 and 2008.

Mason’s career change to broadcasting science news became recognized in the years following with prestigious awards in 2010 and 2011. The program continues to be broadcast at this writing.

Married and divorced twice, Mason is the biological father of four children and 15 grand-children.