Chieftain photo by Bryan Kelsen Pueblo transplant Jack Selway has made a name for himself in business, community affairs.

After Big Sky and Big City, 

Selway fell in love with Pueblo

By GAIL PITTS
The Pueblo Chieftain 

"Radio 81 KGO San Francisco."

Those were exciting words for an 8-year-old boy listening to the only radio station he could pick up outside Missoula, Mont. - and that was at night.

He listened to such oldies as One Man's Family soap opera.

"Radio 81 KGO San Francisco."

Those were heady words in 1971 when the green kid from Montana, Jack Selway, was actually broadcasting them.

From the time he was a boy, Selway knew he wanted "to do something in radio."

Never mind that his early years were on ranches.

"I was pretty much anti-ranch," Selway recalled last week.

As a youngster, he didn't cotton to rising at 4 a.m., riding 60 miles to the ranch and driving a tractor in freezing cold.

By the time he was 15, he was broadcasting for a local station in Dillon, Mont.

He spent five years at the University of Montana in Missoula - and changed his major four times.

But big-time performing beckoned.

In retrospect, Selway says he thinks that in those days he "wanted recognition."

He got it, although it took awhile.

He drove to San Francisco in 1971 and took a job selling furniture.

It was the next year that luck hit - or rather, that he turned an opportunity into a success.

An announcer at KGO was sick. Selway had met the news director once and he called to tell the young man to go on. He stayed on for a second night and eventually announced there for two years "at $7.50 an hour."

But that second night, he also received a phone call from one Ira Blue, the station's talk show host. Selway had written Blue - who claimed to have the first talk show in the country - before coming to the West Coast, asking for his advice.

Selway became Blue's fill-in host "off and on for six years."

Meanwhile, by 1973, he discovered he really wanted a career in industrial film production and formed Media Consultants Co. of California, the forerunner of his current public relations practice.

That year, he produced the first video training film for Safeway, which headquarters in Oakland, and did work for Kaiser, the industrial, not the health-care, company.

Training, safety and community programs would become his forte.

His clients also notably included 20 years producing VIP briefing videos for the Naval Weapons Station, an annual marketing film for the U.S. Marine Corps regular presentation to the Congress and work for Unocal, Chevron and Dow Chemical.

Selway moved to Pueblo in 1997, although he bought his home on two years earlier.

He says he "just fell in love with Pueblo."

After nearly a quarter of a century in the sophisticated metropolis by the bay, he was pleased that Pueblo "was as professional here as in San Francisco - but friendlier."

He jumped into Pueblo business and community service work. With public relations as his focus, he has represented such diverse groups as the Colorado Department of Transportation, Associates for Psychotherapy, Rio Grande Portland Cement Corp. and the 2010 Commission.

He chaired the entertainment committee for Pueblo's Medal of Honor convention and served as master of ceremonies. St. Mary-Corwin Hospital this year named him its "Home Town Hero."

A registered state lobbyist, he is also a member of the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce, Pueblo Economic Development Corp. and the Mental Health Association of Pueblo.