Bill Blount has a penchant, or better said “a calling,” to take risks.

Forty years ago at 23 years old he took his savings and signed personal notes with owners Jim and Ann Bocock and Industrial National Bank to buy an AM radio station in Apponaug for $320,000; he’s been caught smuggling Bibles into China; he’s sprinted for shelter when a mortar hit only yards away from where he had been near Gaza; and he crossed from China into North Korea unbeknownst to authorities. He made it back out a day later to discover that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked on 9/11. It was weeks before he got back to this country.

Those are just a few of his stories.

Blount, the son of the late F. Nelson Blount who loved locomotives, founded Steamtown USA, owned Edaville Railroad, Green Mountain Railroad and Blount Seafood Corporation in Warren, R.I., now lives in New Hampshire, where technical advances not even dreamed of when he bought WARV 1590 in Warwick enable him to run his seven radio stations.

“It all started here…this is the mother ship” Blount said in an interview Thursday from the WARV office yards away from the Honey Dew Donuts in Apponaug. Shortly after buying the station, Blount was visited by Pastor Robert Gooding of the Apponaug Pentecostal Church. Pastor Gooding said he had been praying for a Christian radio station, and Blount’s purchase of the station seemed like an answer to prayer. Blount bought the station on July 7, 1978 and worked there for a year doing the programming and broadcasting before expanding his enterprise. Radio has changed dramatically since those days and so has WARV Life Changing Radio. When Blount started WARV it was a daylight station. It is now 24-7 and has an FM signal in addition to the AM.

Like newspapers and for that matter so many locally run businesses, radio stations have likewise been bought up by the bigger players. In his position as a member of the National Religious Broadcasters board and chair for three years, Blount played a role in enabling the smaller stations to survive. He actively advocated for changes in regulations as part of FCC efforts to revitalize AM stations. Regulations had required those licensed for a frequency to have a studio in the community they covered. Those overhead costs made it difficult for marginally profitable stations to survive.

“It can all be done from here,” Blount says, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

While today’s technology indeed makes that possible, WARV has a staff of four and all but two of the Life Changing Radio stations have studios. Programming pays the bills with religious organizations paying for the airtime and basing their decision on the donations they receive in response to their shows. Women make up 60 percent of listeners, with the largest audience being 45 to 54 years old, Blount said.

Blount was introduced to work as a child when his father, believing that the chores of farming were a valuable life lesson, bought Staghead Farm, a 1,000-acre dairy farm in Dublin, New Hampshire. The family, including Bill and his four siblings, moved there from Rhode Island. Nelson tended to his enterprise flying his own plane.

According to the Christian newspaper, Good News Today, Nelson was 45 when he was led to the Lord by businessman Ted DeMoss. As a born again Christian, Nelson brought the Word to the family with Bill “giving his heart to the Lord” at the age of 11. Two years later Bill lost his father when he crashed his plane near the house. At the age of 16, a mole on his knee was diagnosed as melanoma. As he was awaiting surgery the elders prayed for him. Bill believed he was given life for a reason. To this day he feels he is being shown the way and is accepting of what will become of his radio stations.

Like his father, Blount is a pilot. Deborah was an air traffic controller and was assigned to Quonset Point. They met at Quidnessett Baptist Church. The radio played a part in their marriage in 1983, which was broadcast live on WARV.

He has worked with the Bible League, helping raise more than $1 million over the last 20 years to bring Bibles to countries across the world. In the early ’90s, on his first trip to China with the Bible League, Blount was carrying a suitcase of Bibles, as were others in his group. At customs they pulled him out to question what he was carrying. How was he going to explain Bibles written in Chinese? He couldn’t.

Blount remembers wondering if he was going to be locked up, as bringing Bibles into China was forbidden at the time. They let him go, but placed the Bibles in an airport locker and handed him a receipt so that he could retrieve them on his way out. That didn’t happen. Instead, Blount handed the receipt to an underground Christian worker who ensured they were distributed.

“It was God’s way of redirecting the Bibles,” he said.

Blount made another trip to China after visiting South Korea, where he was awed by the thousands who attend church. In China the group was met and asked if they wanted to see what it was like in North Korea. Blount was told the less he knew, the better. He didn’t ask questions and after visiting a farm in China, they crossed over into North Korea. They stayed in a hotel where the beds consisted of a sheet of plywood and the room was lit by a single 20-watt bulb. Their goal was to deliver supplies – paper, crayons and the like – to a school that obviously was comprised of the best students in the area, said Blount. Classroom conditions were primitive, but the students welcomed their visitors with two performances. After dancing the girls raised their hands in a prayer of thanks to Kim Il Sung. The boys appeared with wooden rifles that they used in mock battle. Blount was curious who they were pretending to shoot and was told Americans. Although only allowed to take pictures when given permission, Blount was able to capture a lot on film by pretending to take pictures of members of the group and then zooming in or out to get what he wanted. He said he had little idea of how risky visiting North Korea was and could have well ended up a prisoner for years.

At the invitation of the Israeli government, which Blount reasons was a means of encouraging Christians to visit the country, he was taken to the border with Gaza to view army emplacements and the high level of security. No sooner had they been briefed in the event of an alarm indicating an incoming missile did the sirens sound and they raced for a shelter. They heard an explosion indicating the missile was destroyed before hitting its target. Soon after the siren sounded again, only this time it was a mortar that couldn’t be destroyed and they felt it hit the ground.

“The whole building shook,” he said.

Blount has many more stories of travels to different parts of the world and meetings with heads of governments, including George Bush in the Oval Office. He notes that it all started here in Apponaug. His children are involved in the company, although he’s not to say whether they will be the next generation of Life Changing Radio. “Only the Lord knows,” said Blount.

Meanwhile, there’s a 40th anniversary to celebrate. That’s going to happen Thursday, Oct. 4 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza. There will be awards with Allister Begg as the featured speaker. Blount said more than 250 tickets have been sold.

“A lot of people have made this grow,” he said. He considers much of what’s happened as “providential circumstance and being at the right place at the right time for God to open the door for it.”