Bill Dean was born on November 6th, 1953 at Rice Hospital in Willmar.  He spent the first 13 years of his life pestering his younger sister and helping out his parents on their dairy farm 3 miles north of Belgrade.   In 1965, the same year the Twins won their first American League Pennant Bill’s folks sold their cows and machinery and moved closer to Belgrade locating on 7 acres sandwiched between the Soo Line Railway and Highway 55 on Belgrade’s Northwest border.  Bill graduated from Belgrade High School in May of 1972.  While at BHS he competed in Basketball and Baseball and worked for his uncle John Schaefer who managed the Belgrade Livestock Auction Market as well as for several area farmers especially during summer haying time.   At his uncle’s urging Bill attended Reisch Auction College in Mason City Iowa in June of 1972 before enrolling in Thief River Falls Vocational College in the Radio Communications Program.  Upon completion of the first year at TRF Bill became employed at Lakeland Broadcasting Company in Willmar in June of 1973.  Bill worked primarily on KQIC (now Q102) until 1982 when he became KWLM sports director and assistant farm director for Lynn Ketelesen at the Linder Farm Network which at the time was headquartered in Willmar.   That same year he married Alice Wintheiser, a nurse and farm girl from Morgan, Minnesota. They have one son, Nicholas who recently graduated (12-13-08) from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.  Bill, who always feels best in a pair of old blue jeans and a tee shirt, lives on a farmstead about midway between New London and Belgrade in Burbank Township among the deer and pheasants.