Chuck Foster, who for nearly 50 years was a stalwart of radio and television airwaves in Maine, died Tuesday after a lengthy hospitalization at Eastern Maine Medical Center. He was 64.

The cause was complications from injuries because of a fall suffered at his Bangor home earlier in the summer.





According to his many media colleagues over the past decades, while Foster was known as a loyal friend and hard worker who loved being on air, there was one thing that set him above the rest of the fray.

“It was just that voice,” Bobby Russell, longtime general manager of Zone Radio in Bangor and co-host of The Morning Show on WKIT, said. “He had major market talent. He always kept up on whatever was popular in music, whether it was Madonna or Britney Spears or Drake. And he sounded great on air presenting it.”

Stephen King, owner of Zone Radio, was a friend of Foster’s for more than 40 years, starting when King was teaching English at the University of Maine. King paid tribute to his friend by mentioning him in “It,” as a local DJ called to fill in for Richie Tozier when he comes back to Derry to battle Pennywise as an adult.

“He had the perfect DJ voice, mellow and cheerful,” King said. “When he played dances, he always brought the fun. He’s a loss to the community of Bangor and to the tighter circle that is the broadcasting community in eastern Maine.”

Born David Turke — Russell said almost no one called him David and almost everyone called him Chuck — Foster grew up in the Augusta area. His mother was a country music singer and later a country music radio DJ, and his father was a ham radio enthusiast. Foster got his first job in radio in the early 1970s at WABK, then a Top 40 station broadcasting out of Gardiner. He later moved on to what was then the Bangor-based Top 40 station WGUY, where he was a newsreader and DJ for 13 years.

Longtime DJ “Mighty” John Marshall worked closely with Foster during that era.

“He was truly underpaid for his true worth,” Marshall, now a record appraiser and seller based in Portland, said. “He always had lots of great ideas for commercials and promotions, and he truly had a million dollar voice. And really, he was just such a nice guy. Nobody disliked him.”