For nearly half a century, Bob Cudmore has been educating and entertaining his audience, whether they be radio listeners or newspaper readers.

An Amsterdam native and Glenville resident, Cudmore wrote his final “Focus on History” column for The Daily Gazette last Saturday. In it, he told us about the 1938 movie “Holiday,” with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, and how it was based on the Sanford family of Amsterdam.

It was just one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of interesting stories he shared with us over the years, and one that might have been lost to history if not for him. While his newspaper columns usually focused on Amsterdam and Montgomery County, he had a much larger audience from 1980 to 1993 as the host of “Contact,” a talk show that ran weeknights on WGY-810 and was heard well beyond just the Capital Region.

Cudmore got his start in radio at WCSS in Amsterdam while still in high school. A 1963 Amsterdam High grad, he went on to Boston University, where he worked for the college’s public radio station and was on the air when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. After earning a master's in English Literature at BU, he landed a job with WBEC in Pittsfield and was there for 12 years before hooking up with WGY in Schenectady.

In 1993, with WGY opting to change its format and air nationally syndicated talk shows, Cudmore........

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