Hello there, I'm Ted Allen. I'm here to wish WRJ on a very happy anniversary. I was a part
of the WRJ and story in the mid to late 20 teens. Gotta say, my WRJ and experience was
a true pinnacle, a golden moment in my broadcast career. I was born and raised in Burlington,
so I was happy to have an opportunity to serve my home county of Racine. I also helped
that community in many ways. That included having an award-winning weekly work search segment
on my program, as well as promoting and participating in an inaugural outdoor sleepout to help
Halo of Racine help the homeless. Working with fellow WRJ and colleagues Don Rosen,
Kurt Fulman, Janet Hoff, Tom Carco, and the late Lou Turner and Mr. Racine Mark Eichorst
was a real joy and a great learning experience too, and it all came under the leadership of
a great man of radio, Chris Moral. So thank you WRJ and for making the time I spent with
you one, I will never forget. And again, happy anniversary.
It's our anniversary, and Kurt Fulman left. He was with us earlier. Tom Carco was here
and Janet Hoff for our new center for many, many years. Let's talk about the staffers.
Over the years of this radio station, as far back as you can remember, and you remember
a lot more than I did. I can remember from 91 on up, but pre 91, I don't know.
Just some of the, I mean, let's start it out. Frank Levinworth, who was one of the originators
of the radio station itself, actually did some talking on the air back in 1926. So you've
got him, Frank Starbuck, who was the publisher of the newspaper. He did news from his office,
I'm told, down at the journal news, the journal times. Yet people like Tex Reynolds, who of course
was a columnist, well known columnist for many, many, many years. He did talk of the town
and other programs here. Can he guard Lyman Marens? We had Kurt, Fransche-Bouton was mentioned,
Lou Turner, you got Bill Gum, Paul Kern, Jim Bradley, did the American Motor Show for many,
many years. People still mention that to me occasionally.
And then he, after that, and then he came to work for the station here. Bill Lawrence,
Maria Bell, Norb Trotter, Clark DeForest, Al Gale, who was the Burlington announcer,
Hurtman Sr. and Jr. Hurtman Sr. was one of the executives who helped get the radio station
going for the newspaper. David Pima-Grath, Chris Borrow, we've mentioned. Bruce Davis,
Paul Salisman, Jim Sorenson, Bob Cook, Julius Orovitz, recently came across his grave
up in Pac-Walky, Wisconsin in Marquette County, and got to visit there. Bob James, David
Armstrong, Mike Clemmons, Otis Hewlett, Bob Monkman, who became Captain Satellite. Bob March,
a very successful program out on the West Coast. Francis Strapman, that's just some of the
names. And I'm not doing justice to all the others who are part of this radio station.
And of course you've got the many, many part timers who worked here over the years, over
the decades. You mentioned one of our former favorite ones, Scott, who we tried to get to be
able to do news one time. Remember? Scott Mallowback? Yes, we tried to get him to be able to do something,
and I did it behind your back. We were working with him, trying to help him, and gave it a shot,
and you got wind of it, and said, don't do that again. We were trying to give it so you weren't
lucky enough over his shoulder. So give him a chance. Scott, listen to all the podcasts. This
show will be podcast on the civic media app and WRJN.com. And Scott, listen to them in Italy.
Does he? Yeah, he said, it's so fun to listen to that radio station again on the air.
Hi, Scott. Yeah. He's serving our country in the Air Force. Bless him. I talked to Debbie
from a party line, and we'll hear from her in a few minutes, and I talked to her, and she was
mentioning all the party line hosts over the years. Yep. And there were a lot of them, including
Kathy Lawson, who was Bruce, who's Bruce Davis's wife. Yep. Yep. Yep. So you got that list there?
Oh, I've got including our final one, Carol Peacock. Remember, Carolyn, Carolyn Peacock.
Caroline Peacock. It all began with Helen Thomas back in 1957. She started it. Then it went to
Sandy St. John. You got the list there? I'm looking for it. I have so many things here. It's not,
it's, it's just, and of course, off the top of my head, party line 57 with Helen Thomas,
Sandy St. John took over in 1969. And some of these people who succeeded others became secretaries
in the office and, or for the program. Kate Bus, started doing the show in 1969 as well. She
lasted until 72. Sue Paulson took over from 72 to 74. Then Kathy Larson started doing the show.
She worked in the office 73 up until the end of 1984. Then Debbie Thogerson took it over in
85. And she lasted until 96. And then Caroline Peacock did a few shows and people always ask me
when I ran into them, whether it's church or I see them, they say, why can't you ring back party
line? And he said, do you know why party line disappeared? Google. Yep. Google did party line
in because, you know, before, before the internet, you were able to call up Debbie on party line
or any of the party line host and say, how do you do this? And they had a card catalog in front of
them. Excuse me, a card catalog. And they looked up the answer and gave it to you. Now you can
Google it and get 50 answers within a nanosecond. It takes that long to get the answers.
Right. You know, the sad thing was I found a lot of those documents, those cards, those books,
downstairs in the basement. And I knew what was going to happen to them. And I asked Debbie,
do you want any of these things? And she indicated not really. And so I kept a few of the cards with
information on them. But sadly, that stuff is gone. It is a lot of the stuff here. And one of the
employees here, I don't know if you mentioned him Ralph Schoenleben. We're going to get to that.
Yeah. He was here for 55 years on the air. I think it was 55.
Let's go back to party line just for a moment. I found your list and a couple of names of people
that we want to mention. Tina Floyd, Trina Floyd and Ruth Ann Chase did some fill-in work for me.
We want to mention Tom Alton and Jim Walker filled in the gap.
You are really good research on this. And Debbie, by the way, got to interview two of the original
munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. That was from the 39 film. That was in the 1990s she did that.
I got a couple of pictures of that with them. It was in this room right now.
In this very room. Yeah, in this room. This was an interview production room at the time.
I also want to be speaking of a women's program. There was a program called Ladies Air Journal.
That was with Isabel Monk. She was married to a man who was a judge here in this town for many
years. And she did it from 55 till 1970. Then ironically, in 1970 Monk and Peter Bach, who did the
Danish program for many, many years. In 1970, they retired same year, combined 56 years of service on
the air. No, it was number two. Really? Yeah, we had 53 years, almost 50, technically more than
together. Not 50. About 54, maybe 55, with her part time work. But yeah, that's the thing. A lot
of people stayed at this place for many, many years. Yeah, nobody else would hire them. No,
so that's not it. Would you have this place on your resume? Nobody wanted to touch you.
And the only, and I found this out, the only female program director in the history of this
radio studio. And you should be interested in this. Sue Beeland in the early 1930s, when John Clark,
who had been the program director, left to take over the Kenosha studio. So Sue Beeland was in
charge of programming. She'd done everything else at the station, kind of like you used to do.
She did it for a few years, and then she left, and she went to Chicago. But the only female program
director. Any female news directors now? No, the speaking of news,
19, six, okay, the journal news had operated on the station from 1928, technically, all by itself,
up until 1969. Then it sells it to sentry insurance. Sentry insurance wants a standalone operation.
And I still found letterhead in this building from sentry insurance. Yep. Yep. So they bring in a guy
from Kenosha, Don Edmark, to start up a news operation here. All by itself, you know, not connected
to the paper. So from 1969 till 1986, it's Don Edmark, he's the news director. Gary Suhr, who had been
here as a general announcer starting in 1962, and had gotten into doing sports broadcasts as well,
Gary takes over in 1986. That lasts until 1998, and a July, 1998. Then I'm here
from 98 until 2018. And now Stuart J. Wattles is in charge of the operation. Four news directors
since 1969 till today. That's a long run with news directors. Yeah. That's pretty neat. We've
been fortunate. Yeah, nobody quitting. Oh, well, some people quit. Well, now a lot of different
people floated came through the news department as well. Uh, you guys Steve, grow L. Joe Sona.
I replaced L. Joe Sona. I remember some of the we used to have evening newscasters here at one
time. You know, I will tell you, we used to have a staff of 26 people here when I was here at this
radio station. It was a lot. This was a thriving beehive of people running around salespeople,
managers, announcers, because back then there was no automation for overnight. So you had to have
announcers 24 hours a day in the building. What we would do, we would run news from basically
530 in the morning, you'll 530 in the evening. And with the news staff doing it, then we would put
it all in a folder and allow the announcers to read it at certain times throughout the evening.
So that's where your news other other news readers came from.
I want to touch upon and I hope I don't have time before we have to break here. Ralph Shoneley,
and I want to talk about Ralph. When I got here, he was an old guy. You know, and I worked with him.
He did his show live. It was the Sunday evening concert. It was a classical music show. He knew
everything about classical music. He even sold in his retirement years. I cook your media. It was
called and he worked out of a bookshop in the back of the bookshop selling classical CDs and he ran
a classical music show on Sunday nights. The Sunday evening concert here on WRJN for 55 years.
And I used to, when later on, he couldn't do it live anymore because he couldn't drive. So we used
to record it on Saturdays. I used to come in and stay with him and help him record it. But he ran
his own everything. I just was down case. He needed some help with it. And unbeknownst to me during
his last live days on the air, the what they call board operator in the studio was recording them
on CD. I didn't know that. So we actually had over a year worth of Ralph Shoneley's programs.
And after Ralph passed away, we still continued to run them on the radio. And they're all gone.
Somebody threw them out. And unfortunately, there's no record of him anymore having been on this
radio. I don't have any audio of it. There's no audio of it. There's not a lot of audio from
basically before the time I got here in 1979. I've had bits and pieces that I found through
people like Don Edmirk. Okay, let's take a listen to one of our four favorite employees here at
WRJN Radio. Hi there. It's wonderful that WRJN is celebrating its birthday. I'm Pete Ferrand and I
was a part of WRJN more than a decade ago. I used to do the afternoon talk show and it was the
best job I've ever had, getting involved with local issues and meeting all the people.
I'm still in the area. I still listened to WRJN, which is truly a heritage station. A radio station
should be a part of the community, an important part. And it's good to see its current owners seem
committed to continuing that tradition. So this is Pete Ferrand wishing WRJN to know all its
listeners, sponsors and staff a very happy birthday celebration.
Hey everyone. It's Tim Edas, former vice president and general manager of AM 1400 WRJN.
Hey, it's great to be part of this celebration and a very, very happy anniversary.
13 and a half years went by so fast in Racine and Kenosha. Can't wait to get back there again.
Wish you everybody well. Thank you.
Oh,
I've done Rose and thanks for joining us here at WRJN Radio 1400 AM 99.9 FM 98.1 FM and Kenosha.
Thank you for listening to us on our anniversary show today.
Craig Baldwin was here earlier. Tom Carc Lewis here, Janel Hopper's here, our news department
back together again. And let's talk about some of the shows that were on WRJN that people remember
like tradeio. Tradeio on the radio. And that was a show where you accept for firearms and there was
one of the writing we couldn't. Cars and firearms. Other than that, you could sell anything.
My seller trade was like swap shop. Yeah, that's actually last year for a number of years.
And you can even get in on it. The calls were just, I mean, we had two phone lines that were
always crowded. People trying to sell their junk. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't a unique
program because a lot of stations did swap in shops. They call sure. Sure. You had that, you had
little red book, which was the birth announcements. I'm sure my birth was announced here on the
station. It's a Lyman Marins announced his son one morning and then passed out cigars in the studio,
which was really fun. His son David gave me audio of that. You had your sound off program,
which went for a number of years. Rhythm at random, Porter's sponsor, Porter's furniture sponsored
an opera program back in the day. That lasted for a number of years. By the way, Porter's also sponsored
on our FM station, Sunday Brunch on Broadway and Sunday Morning of the Movies. They were one of
our sponsors. You can't lose little concert hall, man about town. That was Tex Reynolds just talking
to people. Anything of the opinions of the passerby. Meet me under the clock. That's where Bill
Gum would go down under the clock of the American bank building. They had a connection to the studio.
They plugged in a microphone and they talked to people on the street. Wow. Okay. I like that.
There's Bill Gum. Nancy Gum is his widow gave me some pictures. It showed him standing there,
including there's one. He's in shorts. They're thinking, what's going on? There's another guy
who's connected to the station, John Edmunds, who's in Bermuda Shorts. What is this all about? I came
across a story eventually. It was so hot one period of time back in the 50s that they tried to do a
little variation of it. It was so hot. Meet me under the clock and Bermuda Shorts to get people
to show up in Bermuda Shorts. They did. Imagine doing that today. Oh gosh. People go, what's going on?
Let's see what else we got. Uncle Ray's Tune School, one of the programs that was
on Respectfully Yours, which was Bill Brooke. Albert Gammaister. Albert Gammaister, I worked with
him at another radio station. We had on the air live and on recordings back in the day. Radio mall,
the back home hours. Say it well. Radio mall. Radio. I remember that. We used to sell coupons
to from advertisers at a huge discount. That was a good deal. Yeah. Okay. Say it for cash.
Wake up by gum was the the morning show that Bill gum did. They call it wake up by gum. He got
him standing in an advertisement in his pajamas. I wish we had a photograph of him standing
under a clock with a microphone. That is. You of course had the breakfast club with Don McNeill
here on the radio for a number of years. The Sunday evening concert we mentioned Ralph.
Just there's so many different programs. They were filling time slots back in the early days.
So sometimes it would be 15 minutes. Sometimes it's half an hour. Sometimes it's an hour.
But they were filling spot and all kinds of different unique names to them. I listen to old time
radio shows all the time every day of my life now. I listen to two or three old time radio shows
during the day when I'm at home. And I love them. And to listen to them today, it sounds like
they're made today, but they're actually made in the late 40s, early 50s up until I think the last one.
I'm pretty sure took place in 1961 or two was yours truly Johnny Dollar, which I love that show.
And I think that was the last broadcast of a drama or comedy show on radio. Then it went to
disconkeys. And that was the end of that. DJs can ruin radio and we did it.
Yeah. Back in the day, you could not be on the air unless you had engineers. And this place
has had a parcel of them over the years. It started with lead deckant,
EFLE deckant was the chief engineer for this radio station when it began. His good friend Stan
Fisher would come along and join him and they worked together as a tandem. They put together a lot
of what the radio station was and how it operated back then built equipment on their own. Both were
ham radio operators, by the way. They had their own handles out there and they were doing that. They
lasted for a number of years. Stan Fisher retired in 1969. You had names like Gene Quinn. And some of
these gentlemen showed up at our one of our anniversary shows. Gordy Davidson, Al Zemblow, David Zurich
took over for Stan Fisher. Reese Roberts, and I want to tell a story about Reese in a second.
Terry Bond, the late Terry Bond, what a guy. I mean, this is a guy that would not give up on
something until it was completed, right? I could tell you stories for hours on Terry back when I
worked with him at W.E.Z.W.1037 in Milwaukee. He was in the trenches with mud fixing cables
outside to our tower. I mean, he was, he's a great guy, Terry. Mike Pacula, Gene Butterfield.
I love Gene. Wilfred Simonson, Bob Gore-Jans, Joe Cooper, Howard.
Howard-Jans still an engineer here. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Joe Cooper, Howard Wilde, Harold
Placik, and Jay Milky, just to name a few of them. There were other many, many others that
were involved in the operation of the station. I mentioned Reese Roberts.
Hold on, I'll call him the Reese Roberts, if I just say because I want to take a break here.
And we're going to hear from somebody else in just a moment. I think I had my run-ins with
those engineers today. I had my run-ins with everybody here at the state.
I hear somebody else you might remember. Here's a voice from the past, which is still here in the
future. Hi, this is Debbie. You might remember me from the party line program the aired weekday
mornings. I am so grateful for the 15 years I spent at WRJN. And for 12 of those years, I was a
host of party line. What a joy it was to be able to do that show with the support of so many
kind and loyal listeners. Thank you for that privilege and the sweet memories. And congratulations
to WRJN for celebrating another anniversary. I'm Don Rose and I'll always
see you at WRJN Radio. Stay with us. Stay with us at WRJN Radio.
My company, Bliss Communications, owned and operated the stations in Rossina WRJN for the mid-90s
and early 2000s. The stations were great. And we got to meet and work with a lot of nice people.
The stations were not only a good investment for us, but probably more importantly, it was a wonderful
group of people. And what I found over the years and dealing with other radio properties and
stuff, the broadcast industry is a lot of fun. And generally it attracts quality, talented,
good people. We were very fortunate to have a bunch of them there. And so I'm just here to say
happy anniversary to everyone there and best wishes.
So hang your stockings and say your prayers cause Santa Claus comes tonight.
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane.
He's got a bag that's filled with toys for boys and girls again.
Hear those sleigh bells jingle, jingle, oh what a beautiful side. So jump in bed and cover your
head cause Santa Claus comes tonight. You know how this song came about? How do you know what you wrote
that song? Let's see, you guys know everything. Let's see if you know this one. You know this one.
He told the story once out. Gene Autry was in broadcast and he owned golden west broadcastes
which owned radio stations all over the west coast and upper north west of this country.
He also owned the California Angels baseball team and he was the singing cowboy in movies for years.
He was a big box office attraction. And I from what I heard a very nice guy.
So he was in the Christmas parade in Hollywood which is called the Christmas Santa Claus Lane
parade or something like that. And he was in the parade and he was the last car in the parade just
before Santa Claus and he said he can hear all the kids yelling, here comes Santa Claus,
here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane. And the idea for him for a song.
And that's how he got the song. That's how it happens. And they still broadcast the parade on TV
and syndication up until a couple of years back. But that's how we did it.
Oh, just we're going to I'm going to break in here a little bit before we've done it. I don't
want this to get lost breaking news or whatever. We've been doing some name dropping here today and
I wanted to know drop a couple of other names. Remember Fahey Flynn?
Fahey Flynn from Channel. Channel. Channel. Channel. Channel.
Channel. Channel. Channel. Channel. Channel. Worked here in the mid to late 30s doing news.
Norbert Trottier told me that. Don Phillips.
He worked at WLF. Yeah. He started radio part time here. And the father of the solid body electric
guitar. That is less powerful. You bet. Did live music performances on WRJ and maybe not from
the studios but from theater sites and other locations beginning at the age of 16
under the names of red hot red and rhubarb red. And he his biography prominently mentions the
radio station as his first radio experience. Yep. So just dropping names. Somebody else I want to
mention. It's on the other page. Okay. It might be on the other page. He's let's all right.
Raymond Johnson. Oh, okay. Yep. Find it. Okay. Raymond Johnson came across this.
At least the papers flying. Well, I've got so much document. I guess I can't remember
everything. I'm terrible at remembering a lot of things. Here it is. Okay. I don't know.
That one. Okay. He's a connocia native, first of all. His career included 1941 through 45 as
the narrator and host of the suspense drama inner sanctum. I listen to that still on the radio.
Now that most of the published information says his career began in Chicago at the Goodwin Theatre in
32. Raymond Johnson himself in a radio interview that was done many years later credits his start at
WRJN's connocia studio as launching his career. His sister noted that they had an opening and he
went for it and he got it. Said he did everything here took put the foam up onto walls and
and everything including performed. Let's talk about that for a moment. This station had a lot of
satellite studios that would not satellite like you think. Different locations West Alice,
Burlington, connocia, Racine. Why would they have studios in West Alice and Burlington?
Some of that well Burlington it's Burlington is kind of under itself and it always has been.
So it wasn't always set up for studio. It came about at different times and then eventually
shut down because they just couldn't support it. West Alice and the Metro Milwaukee area there
were foreign language programs many foreign language programs done in the early days including
German Polish Scandinavian. Oh geez there's so many and they did them out of there in fact some of them
the I came across one picture of the entire staff of the of the Metro Milwaukee studio
in one location at an interesting picture but the many different programs you had
different satellite locations here in Racine you mentioned. Uptown Racine there was a music store
where they created the Gerlots and Orson White music studio they created a broadcast studio in
uptown. There was another location. It's all running by me now. This is way too early. I shouldn't
be doing this at this hour of the morning anymore. From the guy who used to get here at 3.34
o'clock every morning. Try one. Try one at the end. One o'clock. So there were many different
locations because they were that's just what they did back then. And by the way they had to connect
them with phone wire. It was wired. All wired. Because they didn't have like they have today the
internet satellite coverage was all and phone lines were very expensive. Yes. It wasn't like a
phone line for your phone. It had to be what they call a a high quality phone line. They called
it a 4 8 K C phone line. Yeah. Any thousand cycle phone line because you didn't want the broadcast
to sound like you were talking over your telephone. Right. So they used to use high quality phone lines
and they were very very expensive. They would wire they must have had one of those phone lines at
Horlick Athletic Field because for one I believe one season maybe two. They recreated broadcast of
the Racine Bells women's baseball league games and broadcast them on the radio recreated.
I think I think it's got easier with remote broadcasts when we got there was something called not
going to get too built into it but a Marty system which was a a wireless system where you
aimed one thing it from one direction and you met the radio stations antenna and they met
and then they had the internet units. We used to use a broadcast to became a lot easier
and Jan Paul Kern and later Jan and Kurt used to broadcast the 4th of July parade every year
from my front lawn. Yes. We used to say but we couldn't have done it without that equipment.
The technology. Right. Broadcasting the 4th of July parade was not unique however. It went
back into the 60s even maybe into the 50s with some of the announcers that were with the station
back then. You talk about the equipment the phone lines. I have to tell the story. Reese
Roberts was the engineer. Oh you tell the Reese Roberts user. Okay. So it's December 1980 like
you know how many years later December in 1980 the Taste of Choice restaurant fired terrible
tragedy. The two firefighters died. Clyde Kerry and John Hoggle. So a few days later I mean
the city is in mourning. W R J and broadcast the funeral service live. We thought it was it had
to be done and the announcer who was doing that from the scene you know leading into the service
and coming out of the service. That was Jim Sorenson who had been you know you're mourning
Jack and talking about different things and playing records and doing that. Jolville guy and
having a lot of fun. He did a fantastic job that day talking in a very serious tone leading into
the service. Okay so three years later we have the trial of the two men who were accused at the time
later quitted of this particular crime. To cover the trial which lasted more than seven weeks seven
and a half weeks our engineer Reese Roberts and we got the approval from Judge Dennis Flynn
hooked up a phone line into the court system the sound system in the courtroom which allowed me to
cover the trial from this very room listening to it over the phone line and that phone line at the
very end allowed us to broadcast the verdict live on the radio. There were many big stories broadcast
on the station. The assassination of President Kennedy was I think Gary Sore was here for that
was you not? 62 Gary started yes. Yeah so he was there at 63 November 63 and of course we
most people can remember 9-11. 9-11? Oh yeah. It was a shocker because it happened when we were
all on the air here. I was on the air with our metro traffic people and he paused in the middle
of a traffic report and said something happened to hold on. Oh look at a plane crashed into the
world trade center. What an accident. And he said we'll get more details on it and then just a few
minutes later we did another traffic and we said wait a second. It's at the same one I heard him say
yeah no it's the second one you see sure it's not the same one and we immediately turn the radio station
right over to ABC all day. Once we were able to get ABC going on the air because there had been a
miss happen the backyard with the lawnmower service cut a cable over a cable ran over a cable and so
Ron Richards who is our operations guy in fact I got to take a picture of that ran a cable from
the the newsroom into the control room down the hallway into the control room and that's how
we got ABC on the air that day to be doing that. I remember going to the newsroom watching the
buildings collapse. I remember them building the world trade center when I lived there. I remember
them constructing it and here it was coming down that was that was a said they know you you were
working here at the time were you in Kenoshe at the time Jan. No I was here. You were here okay
I went I went right. She had she came in. I came in. I was I was going to run errands. I hadn't
showered. I had she just came in. I'm driving down Ohio Street and I heard on the radio and I got
to victory Avenue and the car turned to the right nothing and I came. What a day. I mean I remember
going home to walk my dog and it was such a sunny beautiful day here and I looked up as how can
this happen on a day like this. Yep. A sunny beautiful day and of course we were changed forever
after 9-11. I later found out that one of my best friends in high school was a lieutenant in the
New York City Fire Department. His twin brother and I were great friends the Guja brothers and I found
out later on that Jeff Guja was in the building when it fell down. Came down and so I talked to Gary
just a couple of years ago and I I mentioned because I heard his brother's name mentioned in one
of the memorials and he said yeah he said you know especially when you lose a twin he said it was
something I'm still not over you know losing my brother. We had the two space shuttle disasters. Oh
yeah. I was coming into the station when the first one happened and then the second one happened
a week and yeah happened a week and I'd been in here working early and was home sleeping and I
Jan wakes me up and says Columbia is you know exploded and so we came in here and she went over to
high or like high school where a Laurel Clark the astronaut from Racine went to school and talked to
I mean Bill Frayer was a teacher yeah and so that was that was another bad one. Then we have
other stories like the morning of the the mayoral arrest that we broke that story the mayor
overseen at the time got arrested and I got a phone call in the morning totally out of the blue
it's just before seven o'clock and I'm told that our mayor is in Kenosha County jail. What do you do?
My best source is the council president David Mack at the time he and I knew each other he could
he knew what we did and he confirmed it and that set off a chain of events that lasted
quite a while. I'm not going to go into it but I remember that morning. Yeah when you came in yeah
it was crazy. It was crazy because we were going because I also did news on the FM station
live at the time and yeah you had to run between studios and you're like what do I do?
Coming back we do in memoriam a little in memoriam and we're also going to talk about the owners
of this station you know who were entrusted with this operation and kept it going for all these
years which is fantastic. We also have another voice from the past and you'll remember this one time.
Well I can marine I never say that word former anything. Jim Sorenson Morning Guy from WRJ used to
be any way for about 1971 through about 1983. A couple of the best years of my life were included
in that along with Herbert Hoover who was the Commerce Secretary at the time at the site of
the station license. I want to wish everybody and we're seeing a happy anniversary of WRJ and
let's face it a station that survives that law is kind of a kind of a phenomenon and I wish
everybody the best. Have a good have a good next year for the 100th anniversary.
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
Hi this is Dave McGrath I did mornings on WRJ and back in the 80s 1980s.
Don Edmark was the newsman Bill Gum was a station manager Debbie my friend Debbie was doing party
line. I learned a lot of WRJ and I made a lot of great friends from still my friends and it was
just great great fun and I wish WRJ and a happy anniversary. It was nice day from those people.
Track him down to all into the earth somewhere into heady somewhere in Fiji somewhere over in
England somewhere now. Nice retirement packages we get. Yeah you wanted to say something
you talked about. We talked about the foreign language programs that that happened over the many
many decades. I wanted to get this in because there were many of them up until even the 1960s.
The Italian program had different announcers. Remo Giazinti Al Costa Biel, Luigi Aiello and
Mario Ruffalo. Oh yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. German program Mehta Huth did that show for
11 years and there were other different German programs. The Danish program with Peter Bach
from 1928 to 1970. The Czechoslovakian program with Vijay Kanaček. Now you got the Polish program
hosted by Tony Simczek from 1938 to 1969. I believe Tony was at our first anniversary show of
the 70th anniversary show at Memorial Hall. Apparently though Tony was not the first Polish program
host. I came across something that documents it. According to who's who in Polish America a
documentation of publication that said Francis Lamanowicz who was graduate of St. Catherine's was
the first first Polish language radio announcer in Wisconsin from 1929 to 1932. This is the little
things that I come across once in a while that I find fascinating because it counters some of the
beliefs that you have about who was who at the station and who did what first and it's just been
fun. I love doing that. Some people no longer with us. Most recently we lost Lou Turner who was
on the air at WRJN. He was a production director at WRJN. We lost Tom Kramer who was a border
operator here also on air work but it was invaluable on equipment when we did remote broadcast.
We lost Gene Butterfield one of our engineers recently. We lost Terry Bond another engineer.
Gary Suhr passed a few years ago. Gary Suhr don't throw some of the names.
And duty is a general manager. That was a surprise. I did not know that until just recently.
He passed away in August of this year. Yeah. We've lost a lot of I told you there was one time we
had for one of the anniversary show has had a list of 13 and eight of those names are not around
anymore. Well I have a hundredth anniversary coming up to my very first station next year.
And I was talking to some of the guys. There were three or four of us. That's all that's left.
There's nobody left. Yeah. And we could do this over Zoom. And they said we'll maybe have
another anniversary. Our first anniversary party was right after 9-11. Now we had set it up
a summer before 9-11 and we couldn't we had to pay for everything. So we still added in October
that year. Some of the owners who own this place. Let's start off at the beginning and I can
I the I came in at Tony the Tony Gazana years. All right. Technically this is the the current
ownership is the 10th. Technically. All right. You start out with Frank Levin,
Worth, Harold Witt and the journal news in 1926. In 1928, the journal news takes over a sole
ownership of the radio station. Then Lee Enterprises buys the Racine Journal Times. And that's in 1968.
1969. It is sold. The station is sold to sentry insurance. In 1986, Southeast Wisconsin radio
comes in Dex Card. And if anybody remembers the name Dex Card, he was big on WLS in Chicago
in the 60s. And it's his real name. Yeah. Dex had been the general manager of WLIP for a number
of years. Jan worked for him down there. Then he got out of radio, at least managing operations. He
was a broker and did business dealings with radio. And Dex passed a few years back. We didn't we
found out about it. And we passed that information on to people like Robert Feeder in Chicago. And
eventually Ricardo Torres from the journal Times did a nice story about us remembering Dex Card.
Who deserved that attention? There was nothing otherwise that I'd seen to remember Dex Card.
So 1988 comes Vision Broadcasting. Tony Gazana. Oh, that was the name of it. I forgot
Vision Broadcasting. Right. 1994. Then it's MG Communications. That's Tony and Greg Marcus.
From Marcus theaters. Marcus theaters. All right. 1997 Bliss Communications. Skip Bliss,
who we heard from earlier out of Jamesville. 2014. You've got Magnum Media. And currently you have
Civic Media awning this radio station. And all grids you're steward of the radio station when
you take ownership. Yes. And your mission is to keep it intact. Keep it on the air. Keep it
serving the community, which what the FCC really wants you to do. They want these stations to serve
the community. And they've done it. And that takes us right up to present day when it has asked
to come back November 1st. And here we are again full circle. We're all part of it. Yeah. You,
me, Jen and that other government was here earlier today. We're all part of it. And it's,
you know, and even, you know, we talk about Chris Moro, who started out here as a teenager,
later came back as vice president general manager of the station and has now vice president
of Civic Media. Yeah. How about that? Talk about coming full circle. Really? This guy did a
circle, a lap and came back. He did it all over the place. Have any closing thoughts about the
anniversary? Because we have a hundredth coming up in two years. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I continue to,
we continue. I shouldn't say I, we continue to gather as much information and put it into our
collective as possible. Newspaper articles, photographs and a lot of its journal time stuff. But
there's other things internal documents, pictures we've taken, pictures we've found, stories we
found. It's, it's been fun. I enjoyed it immensely. And it's fun seeking things out. Jan and I have
been looking for trying to find burial places or some of the people that used to work here. And
we found several of them. Most recently, it was Julius Orovets up in our Cape County, Bruce
Michael up in Wisconsin Rapids. Different, different people that had a history with this place.
And it's fun to find them and say high in person to those people. And I enjoyed talking all these
people. We, we chatted before we recorded their bits. I had, I had a really good time talking and
chatting them and nobody's got a bad thing to say. Even some of these people who were fired from
this company in, you know, different ownerships still wanted to do this with me and talk to me and
talk about the times and no, no grudges, no hard feelings. That's great. And thank you for doing
this. This is important in the history of this place and the history of this city. I was fired too.
Here I am. You never know what's going to happen. You guys are great. I love you to Janet
Hoff, Tom Carco. We're here for many years at WRJ and Kurt Vaughman here earlier today also here
for many years. And I would thank all the people who took time to talk to me. Next year, we're going
to do a half hour with each of the people that are still around and make an historical record of
WRJ and radio. Okay. I'm Don Rosen. Obviously tomorrow morning 6 a.m., bright and early. I think the
mayor is coming in tomorrow. I'll have to check that sheet there. But I think the Mayor
Corey Mason is going to be here. Thank you to the folks at Civic Media for being behind this
today and helping us out in SWRJ and radio. Thanks for being here.