Fairbanks Tall Timbers: Robert Hannon

The Fairbanks Tall Timber Series was created to honor those who have served the Fairbanks community well. Join accomplished journalist Tom Hewitt either in person or via Zoom as he interviews these stalwart members of our community.

Robert Hannon has been working in broadcasting for nearly half a century, beginning in the 1970s at KFPA in Berkeley, California, and eventually ending up at KUAC in Fairbanks in 1983, where he has been a familiar voice on local airwaves ever since. He has held many roles at KUAC, on both sides of the microphone, and has also been a keeper of local oral history through his Northern Soundings interviews and as prior host of Tall Timbers. In addition to his work as a radio journalist, Hannon spent a decade working for the Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks and has also been active in local library and literacy related issues. If there’s a through-line of the work that Hannon has done over the course of his life so far, it’s a recognition of the unique value of the stories people have to tell. He was reticent to be interviewed himself, much preferring to ask the questions rather than answer them. But we’ve convinced him that, much like the hundreds of community members he’s interviewed over the course of his career, his story is also very much worth telling.