And We're Live! SM East alum and father Nick Vasos anchors FOX4 morning news

“Wait, what?” junior Dane Schwartz said, during the choir concert this past October. “That’s your dad?”

Scanning the crowd, Dane had recognized a man with short, gray hair and glasses lined in thick metal strips. A man he recognized from Channel 4. Who he’d seen covering weather forecasts and traffic on countless mornings.

Turning to his fellow bass singers, he whispered “that’s Nick Vasos!” to his friend senior Gus Vasos — Nick’s son.

Gus is used to the dramatic reactions when peers discover that his dad is an anchor for FOX4KC’s morning news. When Dane found out, he couldn’t believe the man on TV with the deep, rolling radio voice reporting every day before dawn was his friend’s dad.

Since Gus was a baby, his dad has been anchoring and covering traffic — a routine that wakes Nick up at 2:12 a.m. sharp, sends him live on air to thousands at 4:30 a.m. and tires him to sleep by 8 p.m. every night. Growing up, his dad’s job has been more than just an anecdote. It’s been a way for the two to bond over storytelling.

After Nick wakes up and showers, he dresses and prepares some food, usually leftovers from the night before. He lets the dogs out and gives them a treat. 

When Gus wakes up at 6 a.m. on school days, he’ll turn on his dad’s show, watching the end of his father’s segment with his mother — a ritual the two have shared together since he was little. 

“I watch [the show] all the time,” Gus said. “Pretty much almost every day, with my mom in the morning before I go to school. Like, ‘Oh, there’s Dad.’”

Nick — an SM East alum who played club baseball and cheered on the cheer team — studied communications at University of Missouri Kansas City. He loved listening to local and national sports, especially Don Fortune, a renowned local radio personality. In 1993, he started interning at an all-sports radio channel.

“I asked the general manager if there was anything that I could do, whether [I could] clean the windows, take the trash out or cut the grass,” Nick said. “Anything I could do to get in the door at this radio station. And he must have liked that, because he offered me an internship.”

In 1996, Nick started doing play-by-play announcing for the KC Comets, an indoor soccer team. He’s been calling their games for 30 years. Gus and Nick often watch games together, and discuss the team and their prospects.

“I’ve been going to [Comets] games since I was a little kid, and me and him love to bond over the Comets, because we both love the team so much,” Gus said. “Whenever I’m home it’s like, ‘Hey Dad, did you hear this player got traded?’ or ‘Hey Dad, did you see that play?’”

When he joined FOX4 in 2002, Nick began by doing traffic coverage, and in 2011 he began anchoring sections of the morning news as well. In traffic, he learned to use 380 different cameras and modular software to cue graphics and report on road conditions five or six times an hour. 

In anchoring, he learned to improvise, with his current early and late morning segments taking different roles. In the former, he covers the headlines, weather and traffic, while in the latter he co-anchors from the coach and aims to tell community stories, from the upcoming World Cup Draw to previous Royals playoff seasons.

“It’s the big things that bring us all together,” Nick said. “The community things that create so many great memories for me and our new team.”

Nick leaves his work at 11 a.m. He cooks dinner at 5 p.m., and the Vasos family watches shows together before bed. On Sundays, the family watches “CBS Sunday Morning,” a decade-old family tradition. From the script writing to the stories, the Vasos love the show’s quality journalism.

“The show is so well written and produced,” Nick said. “And the stories that they tell will make the hair on your arm stand up. These stories are for everybody. I mean, these are stories that anybody would be interested in.”

Although Gus wants to go into real estate instead of following in his dad’s footsteps, he can’t help but smile when talking about how proud he is of his father’s career. And Nick encourages his son to pursue what he loves.

“I want him to do what he wants to do, and I want him to enjoy what he’s doing,” Nick said. “I found a profession that I love and enjoy and [I] feel like I’ve never worked a day in my life.”