Tribute to Eric Harold

by Michael Allen Smith - February 22, 2016

Eric Harold was Neil’s web guy. He coded, hosted and maintained the NeilRogers.com website. Throughout the WQAM years and even before — Eric made sure that the fans of the Neil Rogers Show could listen to the show live or download shows via the archives.

Unfortunately, Eric Harold passed away at the age of 48 in March of 2011. This was just months after Neil Rogers, who passed away on December 24, 2010. Eric was a one-man operation, so when no one was left to continue hosting and maintaining the NeilRogers.com website, it went offline in late 2011.

During the very early days of the Neil Rogers audio restoration project, I started an email to Eric introducing myself and how I could volunteer the shows I recovered from 1999 to a much larger project. Halfway through the email is when I discovered I was too late and that he had passed away.

If you are interested in seeing the old website, the site archive.org took numerous snapshots going back to late 1998.

web.archive.org/web/*/neilrogers.com

Eric was also responsible for making sure the Daily Polls that became such an important part of the show were working.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, most radio shows did not have a website of the caliber created by Eric. These days we take for granted that we can listen live or download shows we missed from the archives. Back then it was rare. Being one of the first to both stream live and host archives extended the popularity of Neil Rogers nationally and internationally.

Joe Castello who worked with Neil Rogers at WQAM said this recently about Eric.

One of the best human beings that has walked the Earth.

Eric resided in Orlando and away from the Miami market. I'd love to update this post if someone that was close to him comes forward with more information to share. It is also possible that many years of old Neil Rogers Shows reside on one of his servers or backup media.

I would like to thank Eric Harold for making the Neil Rogers Show accessible to me. I never lived in Miami or even heard the show live, but thanks to Eric became a fan via the audio archives on the NeilRogers.com website.