KSMU 91.1fm  Springfield, MO

A. LEE WORMAN, Host of "THE GOLD RING" since the first program  28 years ago, has had a love for traditional Celtic music since his days as a graduate student in the early 1970's at the University of Leeds, England. After his return to the U.S.A., he moved to Springfield, Missouri and taught English at Southwest Missouri State University for several years. Seeing that the area lacked a source for traditional Celtic-based music, Lee approached the KSMU station manager  with his idea for a weekly radio program. The manager readily agreed, and the first edition of "The Gold Ring" aired in January 1982. From the beginning, Lee's approach to programming "The Gold Ring" has been "Less Talk - More Music," and listeners can always be confident that they will hear 50+ minutes of traditional Celtic music during each hour-long edition of "The Gold Ring."

Lee Worman not only provides the KSMU listening area with fine recorded Celtic music on the radio; he also plays it himself. Lee plays Flute, Tinwhistle and Bodhran, and has performed solo and in various local bands for nearly three decades (currently with the quartet The McSwains). He has performed at Milwaukee Irish Fest, house concerts, regional arts council venues, and more pubs, weddings, dances, coffee houses and taverns than he cares to count. In 1988 Lee, as a member of the trio Ashentree, performed two concerts with the Shanghai National Folk Orchestra in The Peoples Republic of China. He has been producer for a number of albums for folk groups in the Kansas City area, and has played as a guest artist on over a dozen recordings.

When Lee is not putting together the next edition of "The Gold Ring," performing Irish music, gardening, or doing photography, ceramics or woodworking, he will invariably be found somewhere down the road riding his treasured old 1976 Harley-Davidson.