By Nick Reiher

I kinda backed into my friendship with Kevin Kollins.

For a couple years, I also was editor of the Bugle/Sentinel Newspapers. I learned one of my reporters was on WJOL every Wednesday around 3:20 p.m. to talk about a major issue going on.

It was a nice way to get the papers’ names out, but when she left, the duty fell to me. I learned I would be talking to the afternoon host, Kevin Kollins. I had heard him on the radio, but never met or talked with him.

The first few such calls were awkward, Kevin would ask me about an issue, and I would have to say, unfortunately, we hadn’t covered that yet. Soon, we began messaging before the assigned chat to pick a topic.

It’s amazing how a friendship grew from a weekly 10-minute chat. But that’s what happened. I guess with Kevin, it wasn’t really so surprising.

I also got to know his news guy, Evan Bredeson, and before I knew it, the three of us even were handling Election Night duties.

Including November 2016, when after it was over, we sat in stunned silence about what had just happened. It wouldn’t fully sink in, at least for me, for several days.

We always found something to talk about on the air. Usually, it was pretty easy. Maybe NorthPoint; maybe something going on with the County Board (When is there not?). Who should, or shouldn’t, get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Whatever, we would spend 10 minutes hashing it out.

More than once, I was able to give him a scoop, culled from a Farm Bureau trip to Springfield, or just something I picked up from my trusted sources.

That was helpful to me, too, when I left the Bugle/Sentinel. Farmers Weekly Review didn’t have a website or Facebook page yet, so WJOL became a great source to spread the word even farther and let people know our yearly subscription was nearly less than monthly costs for other local media.

Even my brother Gordon in Chicago started listening to our weekly updates on WJOL’s website stream.

If Kevin was on a remote – at the county fair or before Race Fan Rally on Chicago Street – he would invite me over to say a few words, sometimes about the news of the day; sometimes just shooting bull.

We kept in touch after he left WJOL. I missed our weekly chats, but when he told me he was running for County Board, I suggested he get his head examined. Like I did when he insisted working at home from his basement studio when he got COVID. Of course, then we would go on to compare symptoms.

I hadn’t seen him personally in a while after he left the station, but when I did, I would ask how things were and to please say hi to Evan.

When I heard he became the public information officer for the Will County Sheriff’s Department earlier this year, I was thrilled. I called to tell him with his experience in broadcasting and a couple decades as a sheriff’s auxiliary officer, he was the perfect choice.

We chatted for a while when we saw each other at the exhibition center at the Will County Fair in August. Smiling and joking, as always. We each later said we could have talked a lot longer … if we weren’t working.

We chatted and texted a few times in his official PIO role. The last time we talked, I said we should sit down for coffee. Great idea, he said, just let him know.

We exchanged brief texts on an impending arrest update, and then there was Monday, Nov. 3. I was just about tucked in for the evening, when I got an alert on my phone that the Will County Sheriff’s Department had just posted a new press release.

“At 9:47 p.m.?” I thought. “Poor Kevin. Having to work this late …

“Let’s see what he has to say … “

Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.