Chicago is home to Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Dr. Joe Dennis. But as his sticker-laden laptop states, he’s “Not that kind of doctor.”
“I wanted to be a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. I didn’t quite get there, but I was a journalist for several years and won many state and regional awards. I wanted to teach and I’m getting to do that now,” Dennis said. “I got to do everything I wanted to do in life, so I’m really blessed with that.”
Joseph Dennis was born in Chicago on August 30, 1976. He’s now the head of the mass communications department at Piedmont University in Demorest, Georgia. During the summer he instructs journalism courses in the Summer Media Academy at the University of Georgia in Athens. But he loves radio almost as much as journalism.
“I wanted to be the next Howard Stern,” he said. “I never got there, but I got to live my dream and do radio.”
From 2000 to 2009, Dennis hosted a radio show named the “Big Rock Show.” It was a Friday night show, but he worked full time at the station, WPUP-FM. “Radio was my major and is still a passion of mine,” he said..” The show brought back the 80s’ “hair metal” and was a Joe Dennis original.
If Dennis is known for anything, it would be his hats. He’s easy to pick out among summer camp instructors – he’s the one wearing the fedora. He has eight fedoras, showing real commitment to the cap. He said that his love started when he ran into a hat stand in New York and the woman working there told him he would look great with a fedora. Sure enough, after trying on multiple, he fell in love. He claimed that his greatest inspiration to this part of his style is fellow half Filipino man, Bruno Stars.
“I always wondered what I’d look like in a fedora,” he said, recalling the single most life-changing moment of his life, when he was at that stand in New York.. “She said, ‘You look great. Here, look at yourself.’ And I was like, I do look good.”
Dennis’ confidence transcends his fedora into his outlook on life. After careers in journalism, radio and now teaching, when asked if there was anything he would change about his life, he answered thoughtfully, “Huh. That’s a really profound question, really deep. Nothing.”
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