CHRIS SEWARD - cseward@newsobserver.com
Chopper Harrison (real name David Martin) arrived in the Triangle a year after the Carolina Hurricanes and helped bring the NHL All-Star Game to Raleigh.
David Martin, the former 96 Rock radio DJ known as Chopper Harrison, died Tuesday night in his Raleigh home. He was 59.
Martin, who spent five years as the morning host on WBBB (96.1 FM), was best known for his relentless support of the Carolina Hurricanes, who arrived in the Triangle only one year before he hit the airwaves. He was the team's most vocal and visible fan at a time when it was struggling to find a foothold in this market, and many players and coaches from that era repaid his support by helping him as his health declined.
In 2001, he slept on the roof of the arena to support a ticket campaign designed to bring the NHL All-Star Game to Raleigh. (It finally happened this year.) In addition to bringing players and coaches onto his show as guests before and after the run to the Stanley Cup finals in 2002, he also became an on-ice intermission host for the team.
"Those were the halcyon days of the organization," Ken Lehner, the team's director of marketing at that time, said earlier this year. "We went from the cellar to the pinnacle. The ride was incredibly exciting. Many people deserve credit - the players, the coaches, the front office, all of that. But in terms of the connection with the community and fans, nobody deserves any more credit than Chopper does."
Born in Fargo, N.D., Martin attended Arizona State University and worked at radio stations in San Antonio, Texas; Houston; Denver; Philadelphia; and St. Paul, Minn., before coming to North Carolina in 1999. After he was fired by Curtis Media in 2004, he returned to Minnesota but came back to the Triangle after he was diagnosed with cancer in February 2009.
