December 28, 2023 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before he was President, he was a strapping radio commentator at WHO in Des Moines. Here's Ronald Reagan's story in his own words.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next to
story from our great affiliate news radio ten forty WHO
in Des Moines, Iowa, for Who's fiftieth anniversary celebration in
nineteen seventy four. A famous solumnus of the station was present,
the then governor of California, Ronald Reagan. His career started
(00:31):
there as a broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Now, it's hard to make a younger generation in this
space age comprehend the whole that radio had on the
American people. Nothing has ever been known that quite matched
it for impact and for the grip that had had
on the people. Even that great movie colossus Hollywood, with
the motion pictures that were family entertainments for so many years,
how do you explain to young people today that radio
(00:59):
was so fat fascinating that the great motion picture theaters
of the day used to have to advertise that you
could come to the movies and not miss Amos and Andy,
because they'd interrupt the show. The lights would go up,
and the screen would go dark, and a man would
come out and turn on the knob of a radio
set sitting on the stage, and for thirty minutes, you'd
sit and listen to a radio show, and then the
(01:20):
movie would start in again. The miracle of sounds of
the outside world, the magic world of entertainment with an
infinite variety, was brought into the living rooms of even
the most remote cabins. But more than radio was responsible
for this, there was something else that the theater couldn't match,
even though it's tried down through the centuries. Good theater
(01:42):
requires stimulating the imagination of the people, and this with drama,
with music, with words. Radio had to produce everything the
image from the mind of the audience. The voices and
the sounds became images in the mind. There was no
way to recreate the pictures. For example, you could not
(02:05):
on television or in movies make a funny week after
week running gag out of Jack Benny descending into his
money vault and have it be a belly laugh every time.
But it was the creaking doors, the sound of the
rattling chains, the hollow footsteps descending deeper and deeper into
the dungeons, and finally that last creaking door opening, and
(02:26):
that little quavering voice saying to Jack, hello, mister Benny,
how is president McKinley doing. But even though radio became
a full grown giant in those depression days, it had
a lusty pioneering spirit. Even those of us who were
beginners were allowed to be innovative and experimental, and many
things went on the air without the benefit of a
(02:48):
production meeting and inter office memos. My own beginning was
an example. I walked into a station for the first
time I'd ever been in one. I'd knocked on a
lot of doors. I don't know how many I'd been
turned away from trying to get a job. All I
wanted to do was say I'll do anything in the station,
because I wanted to be a sports announcer someday. And
finally it came this station's turn, and old Peter MacArthur,
(03:12):
one of nature's most unforgettable gentlemen, sat there behind his
desk and said, where have you been.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
We've been announcing for.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Applicants for auditions, and we've just had an audition and
hired an announcer yesterday.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
This was too much for me, after all the frustration, and.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I said, how the hell does a fellow ever get
to be a sports announcer if he never gets inside
a station? And down the hall to the elevator, which
fortunately was in the basement. And before I could get
up to the floor where I was, Pete, handicapped by arthritis,
coming down the hall in his canes, screaming at me
to wait. And he said to me, what did you
say about sports? And I told him and he said,
(03:48):
do you know anything about football? And I said, I
played it for eight years. Peach said, come with me,
and we went into a studio. He stood me in
front of a microphone. He says, I'm going away. You
won't be able to see me, but I'll hear you.
When that little red light goes on. You stage broadcasting
an imaginary football game and make me see it.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Well, one of the smartest things I did.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
There was a game the year before that we'd won
in the last twenty seconds with a sixty five yard touchdown,
so I knew enough names of the two teams that
I wouldn't have to fish for names. So I stood
in front and when the light went on, I figured
we'd better start in the middle of the fourth quarter
because I wasn't about to get caught from the kickoff on.
And I started with a chill wind coming in through
the end of the stadium and the long blue shadows
(04:29):
settling over the field, and there we were in battle
down there and trailing by six points. And I took
us all the way up, finally from our own thirty
five yard line in this twenty second dash for the touchdown,
and they crossed the goal line, and I grabbed the
microphone and said, that's all. And Pete came in and
in those depression days, said the golden words be here Saturday.
We'll give you five dollars in bus Fareu're broadcasting the
(04:51):
Iowa Minnesota game. It was only much later that I
learned that Ed Reimers was the fellow they'd hired the
day before. And when I read the formal audition that
he had taken, I blessed myself for being a day late,
(05:13):
because I never could a past it.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Ed would have had the job. Don't worry, well, you know,
we learned.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I learned the importance of commercials because later on, when
the football season was over, I was on the staff
and one program that I came to, and instructions were
kind of sketchy in those days you were sort of
on your own, was to go to a remote pickup
from a mortuary in Davenport where we would pick up
some beautiful organ music for a half hour. I read
(05:39):
all this, but nobody told me much about it, and
the organ music was beautiful, and I decided that it
just wouldn't be esthetic to mention an undertaking parlor in
connection with this beautiful music, so I didn't. I found
out the next morning how important it is to mention
the name of the mortuary. It was providing thirty minutes
of free entertainment to the station. Radio wasn't in the
(06:02):
news business at all.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
The network stations were on a telegraph wire.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Our engineers could all with the ticker dot and dash
morse code talk to each other. And one night, while
I was sitting on duty late at night, all alone
in the announcers booth every half hour, interrupting the orchestras
that were coming from NBC and giving the call letters
and all, one of the engineers came in with a
scrolled message just been talking with the ticker to KFI
(06:29):
in Los Angeles, and I interrupted the network orchestra to
say that there was a giant earthquake in Los Angeles
in February of nineteen thirty three. Gave whatever the information
they'd got, and they kept coming in with the bulletins.
We were supposed to go off the air at twelve o'clock.
At two o'clock in the morning, we were still giving bulletins.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
By that time.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Everybody that worked for who they all you found out
listened to the station, were in there. They were on
the telephones. Everybody in Iowa with a relative in California,
and that was everybody in Iowa was.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Calling and wanting to know what had happened of theirs.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
At about two o'clock in the morning, with a perfect
finish you couldn't have written yourself. The last message came
from KFI that said, we're getting out of this building.
We think it's going next. Well, that was a news broadcast,
but the swift moving world of radio WOC who became
Who's You've been told? Fifty thousand watt clear Channel, And
(07:24):
I found myself sponsored for a twice daily sports summary,
and I might say period, because we had a stock
ticker of that old fashioned kind with a tape that
spelled out the scores of baseball or basketball or football
or whatever was going on. But from there on it
was just up to me as to what I was
going to say to fill those two fifteen minute periods.
So I used to sneak out in the street and
(07:45):
buy the early edition of the Registered Tribune, the rival organization,
read the sports section, and go in and d live
fifteen minutes of sports news. All of us had the
right to express ourselves, and the freedom times extended to.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
My brother had just gotten out of college and he
came out to visit me. He was jobless, as was
everyone in those days. He was sitting in a studio
waiting for me to finish where once we would then
go to one of the more famous Des Moines institutions,
known as Moonlight In. It was a Friday night, and
the schedule said I was to fill it with records.
(08:22):
There was nothing coming from the network. In those days.
You went in and picked out your own records. So
we went in and we picked out all the college
songs we could find because the next day I'd be broadcasting.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
A football game from Iowa City.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And then we went on and I decided to interrupt
the records every once in a while and predict how
the games were going to turn out. On the following day,
and I noticed he was sitting across the desk waiting
and he was shaking his head no on some of
my predictions. So I turned on the microphone that was
in front of him and I said, my brother's here
in the studio and he doesn't agree with what I'm saying.
Who do you think is going to win that game?
And we argued and we played music. Arguing came easy.
(08:56):
We'd been doing it for years. And the funny thing
is we were next day, we were in Iowa City
at the game, and pretty soon this became a regular
feature of already debating how the games were going to
come out, and coming on Saturday at nights with the
scores of the games and giving our percentage and how
we'd done and which one was the winner and picking
(09:17):
the most victors. He went on from there to become
an announcer, and as you've heard, a program director and
finally senior vice president of McCann Erickson, I went on
earning an honest living.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
And you've been listening to Ronald Reagan tell one heck
of a story about how things used to be, that
story of his audition and how he got his first gig. Well,
that's just a beauty. When we come back more of
Ronald Reagan and his fiftieth anniversary celebration in nineteen seventy
four of the great powerhouse iheartstation. Who here on our
(09:55):
American Story? And we returned to our American Stories and
our final segment of Ronald Reagan's speech at the fiftieth
anniversary celebration of News Radio ten forty Wight Show in
(10:19):
Des Moines, Iowa. When we last left off, Reagan was
telling us how he got his job at Wight Show
and his life in sportcasting in the early days of radio.
Let's return to Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You know, I have to tell you I may have
even done the first instant replay.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
It's wonderful to be here.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
For this occasion, but to have it also coincide with
the Drake Relays, that great track classic of such national importance.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I broadcast them.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I broadcast them when it was snowing, and I broadcast
them when it was steaming heat. But I remember one
day we did it broadcast, and again it was pioneering.
We shared the Pen relays with NBC. Bill Stern was
at Penn and I was here, and we had warrior phones.
We could talk to each other and the audience could
hear all of it, and then he'd broadcast an event
(11:10):
and asked me what was coming up in Iowa, and
I'd tell him what was coming out up out here.
But all day long, I kept telling him, Bill, you've
got to get it back out here for the quarter mile,
because we got the greatest quarter mile stars in the
United States were bound to break a national, if not
a world record today, so get it back here for that.
So he got it to me in plenty of time,
just in time for the public relations man of Drake
(11:33):
University to bring in the president of Drake University that
gave a speech of welcome to our radio audience, and
he did, and I sat there and I watched the
quarter mile event go by, and when he left the studio,
I didn't have the nerve to tell our radio audience
that they'd missed the quarter mile event. I knew it
had to take about forty eight seconds, so I just
(11:54):
looked at my watch and I said, well, we're just
in time for the quarter mile, And with an empty
track in front of me in a dead silent crowd,
I broadcast for forty eight seconds brought him down the
stretch one two three the way they came in, and
if any listeners noticed a lack of background cheers, I
covered that by describing the crowd as awe struck.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
By the s.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Of course, I wasn't always that successful with things like that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
We did do baseball, and we did.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
It recreating it from telegraphic reports, and there was no monopoly.
Then there were a half a dozen other fellas broadcasting
the same game from the ballpark, and you had to
try to keep up with them, so the audience wouldn't
tune you out and get one of those fellas if
you were too far behind the pace of the game.
So when Curly Waddell god Rest his soul was sitting
on the other side of the glass would true the
(12:49):
headphones would get that dot and dash. He'd start typing,
and I'd start talking and the thing would come through
just in time. I'd say, the picture comes out of
the wind up here comes the pitch, and he he'
danned me a piece of paper.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Now you couldn't read it.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
You couldn't just suddenly scream s one sea and sell
a lot of wheaties. So you'd say, and it's a
strike call breaking over the outside.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Corner to a picture that and so forth and so on.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Well, one day it was in the ninth inning, the
Cubs and the Cards both contending for the pennant, nothing
and nothing, And I saw Curly start to type, and
I had Dizzy Dean in the mound, and I said,
dizz comes out of the wind up, here comes the pitch. Sure,
Curly was shaking his head no, but I thought he
just didn't like something. And I took the paper and says,
the wire's gone dead. I had a pitch on the
(13:36):
way to the plate. There was only one thing you
can do with that doesn't get in a score book.
I had him foul it off and I looked at Curly,
and Curly looked at me, and I just couldn't say
to that audience.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
And the ninth inning, we've lost our service.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We're going to give you a brief interlude of transcribe music,
So I said, disdean. I slowed him down a little.
I had him use the rosin bag a lot, and
I had him sake off signs at length. They wind up.
Finally let go with another pitch, and he fouled that
one off to the right, and then he fouled one
off back of the stands and then he fouled one
off back a third days and I described the fight
between the two kids trying to get the ball. Then
(14:12):
he fouled one off that just missed a home run
by a foot. Now I'm beginning to sweat because I
am beginning to set a world record for a man
staying at bat, and that is good to get in
the news. Till finally the nick of time. Curly sat up,
started typing and I started another ball in the way
to the plate, grabbed the wire and had said.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Jurgis popped out on the first ball pitched. But you know,
hr Gross.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
He had a little occasion when he overdid the informality
of who.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
He came in with the evening news and it was
my turn to put him on.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
He sat opposite me at the desk and I told
him that there was a change of plans. We had
a commercial coming on from the tropical room of the
Hotel Fort des Moines and he'd have.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
To get off early. He had a lot of news
and he didn't want to get off her.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I finally gave him the signa one minute, and he
kept shaking his head and reading news, and I gave
him half a minute and he kept on reading news. Finally, I,
just when he paused for breath, pushed the button and said,
we that's the news for this evening. We'd taken out
of the tropical room with the Hotel Fort des Moines.
Pushed the button. But when I pushed that button, not
only did the music come through from the tropical room,
(15:20):
but I'd also returned on his mic. And his first
move was to kick his chair across the room. And
he then used some forthright language that I'm sure he's
used with great success on some of his more stubborn
do nothing colleagues in the Congress. But the theme music
was underwriting this, and the local police journeyed to the
(15:41):
tropical room with the Hotel Fort des Moines and said,
you got some drunk in hear this? He said, you
better shut him up or we're closing the room. But
hr Gross and who kept on pioneering This station had
(16:02):
its own accredited war correspondence in World War II in
the Pacific and the European theaters. That great family of
listeners here in the Middle West heard at first hand
broadcast descriptions of the Battle of the Bulls and the
signing of the Surrender on the deck of the USS
Missouri in Tokyo Bay. And always with the new and
the different. There was an emphasis on service during the war.
(16:25):
WHO sold more than six million dollars in war bonds
to twenty five thousand investors in forty six states. There
was a clothing drive conducted for the destitute in the
war zones, and the news Bureau of WHO acted as
a clearinghouse the names of the needy foreign families. More
than a quarter of a million parcels were sent to Europe.
Radicals communists in Greece, attempting to sabotage this program, resorted
(16:49):
to burning down the post offices, but the people of Greece,
in gratitude for the neighborliness of the people of the
Midwest of America, named their streets some of their streets
WHO and des Moines and even Iowa. I've been reminiscing
about a half of decade of the half a century
(17:09):
that we're celebrating here to day. Now, perhaps in these
troubled times, I've touched upon something else, and I hope
so a little more. That freedom to pioneer that we
enjoyed as employees of WHO, was in keeping with the.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Spirit of those times.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
We didn't in the midst of the great world wide
depression that had toppled governments and changed national boundaries all
over the world, sit down and give up. There were
doom criers abroad in the land who said that we
come to the end of an era, and that a
way of life was ending. And yet here was a
(17:46):
brand new industry that had been born. Literally in that depression.
People very shortly were traveling with radio in their automobiles,
not just in their homes, and soon radio was in
our pockets.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
And the key to all this was freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Government we recognized and respected as a referee with certain
power to restrain. But that restraint was to restrain the
players in the game, to keep them from harming each other.
And I submit that that is government's primary responsibility still
that mainly.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And no other.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
We opened the West without an area redevelopment plan. We
rebuilt Chicago and San Francisco after the fires without urban renewal.
Now it's forty years later, it's time right now for
some other voices.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Voice of the Middle West.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Our voice is to be precise, to be raised in
behalf of the time tested principles of the past. Voices
that will rekindle the great ideals, the principles which have
set this nation apart and made it unique among all
the social structures that man has created so far in
his long climb from the swamp of the stars.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So thanks to Paul Manzel for sending us this audio,
and the great folks at news Radio ten forty who
for carrying this show and carrying it when very few
stations in this country did. And my goodness, we hear
everything we need to know about why Ronald Reagan was
such a great communicator, and so much of it had
to do with that radio career. The fiftieth anniversary of
(19:21):
who in Des Moines back in nineteen seventy four, here
on our American story
And we returned to our American stories. Up next to
story from our great affiliate news radio ten forty WHO
in Des Moines, Iowa, for Who's fiftieth anniversary celebration in
nineteen seventy four. A famous solumnus of the station was present,
the then governor of California, Ronald Reagan. His career started
(00:31):
there as a broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Now, it's hard to make a younger generation in this
space age comprehend the whole that radio had on the
American people. Nothing has ever been known that quite matched
it for impact and for the grip that had had
on the people. Even that great movie colossus Hollywood, with
the motion pictures that were family entertainments for so many years,
how do you explain to young people today that radio
(00:59):
was so fat fascinating that the great motion picture theaters
of the day used to have to advertise that you
could come to the movies and not miss Amos and Andy,
because they'd interrupt the show. The lights would go up,
and the screen would go dark, and a man would
come out and turn on the knob of a radio
set sitting on the stage, and for thirty minutes, you'd
sit and listen to a radio show, and then the
(01:20):
movie would start in again. The miracle of sounds of
the outside world, the magic world of entertainment with an
infinite variety, was brought into the living rooms of even
the most remote cabins. But more than radio was responsible
for this, there was something else that the theater couldn't match,
even though it's tried down through the centuries. Good theater
(01:42):
requires stimulating the imagination of the people, and this with drama,
with music, with words. Radio had to produce everything the
image from the mind of the audience. The voices and
the sounds became images in the mind. There was no
way to recreate the pictures. For example, you could not
(02:05):
on television or in movies make a funny week after
week running gag out of Jack Benny descending into his
money vault and have it be a belly laugh every time.
But it was the creaking doors, the sound of the
rattling chains, the hollow footsteps descending deeper and deeper into
the dungeons, and finally that last creaking door opening, and
(02:26):
that little quavering voice saying to Jack, hello, mister Benny,
how is president McKinley doing. But even though radio became
a full grown giant in those depression days, it had
a lusty pioneering spirit. Even those of us who were
beginners were allowed to be innovative and experimental, and many
things went on the air without the benefit of a
(02:48):
production meeting and inter office memos. My own beginning was
an example. I walked into a station for the first
time I'd ever been in one. I'd knocked on a
lot of doors. I don't know how many I'd been
turned away from trying to get a job. All I
wanted to do was say I'll do anything in the station,
because I wanted to be a sports announcer someday. And
finally it came this station's turn, and old Peter MacArthur,
(03:12):
one of nature's most unforgettable gentlemen, sat there behind his
desk and said, where have you been.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
We've been announcing for.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Applicants for auditions, and we've just had an audition and
hired an announcer yesterday.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
This was too much for me, after all the frustration, and.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I said, how the hell does a fellow ever get
to be a sports announcer if he never gets inside
a station? And down the hall to the elevator, which
fortunately was in the basement. And before I could get
up to the floor where I was, Pete, handicapped by arthritis,
coming down the hall in his canes, screaming at me
to wait. And he said to me, what did you
say about sports? And I told him and he said,
(03:48):
do you know anything about football? And I said, I
played it for eight years. Peach said, come with me,
and we went into a studio. He stood me in
front of a microphone. He says, I'm going away. You
won't be able to see me, but I'll hear you.
When that little red light goes on. You stage broadcasting
an imaginary football game and make me see it.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Well, one of the smartest things I did.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
There was a game the year before that we'd won
in the last twenty seconds with a sixty five yard touchdown,
so I knew enough names of the two teams that
I wouldn't have to fish for names. So I stood
in front and when the light went on, I figured
we'd better start in the middle of the fourth quarter
because I wasn't about to get caught from the kickoff on.
And I started with a chill wind coming in through
the end of the stadium and the long blue shadows
(04:29):
settling over the field, and there we were in battle
down there and trailing by six points. And I took
us all the way up, finally from our own thirty
five yard line in this twenty second dash for the touchdown,
and they crossed the goal line, and I grabbed the
microphone and said, that's all. And Pete came in and
in those depression days, said the golden words be here Saturday.
We'll give you five dollars in bus Fareu're broadcasting the
(04:51):
Iowa Minnesota game. It was only much later that I
learned that Ed Reimers was the fellow they'd hired the
day before. And when I read the formal audition that
he had taken, I blessed myself for being a day late,
(05:13):
because I never could a past it.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Ed would have had the job. Don't worry, well, you know,
we learned.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I learned the importance of commercials because later on, when
the football season was over, I was on the staff
and one program that I came to, and instructions were
kind of sketchy in those days you were sort of
on your own, was to go to a remote pickup
from a mortuary in Davenport where we would pick up
some beautiful organ music for a half hour. I read
(05:39):
all this, but nobody told me much about it, and
the organ music was beautiful, and I decided that it
just wouldn't be esthetic to mention an undertaking parlor in
connection with this beautiful music, so I didn't. I found
out the next morning how important it is to mention
the name of the mortuary. It was providing thirty minutes
of free entertainment to the station. Radio wasn't in the
(06:02):
news business at all.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
The network stations were on a telegraph wire.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Our engineers could all with the ticker dot and dash
morse code talk to each other. And one night, while
I was sitting on duty late at night, all alone
in the announcers booth every half hour, interrupting the orchestras
that were coming from NBC and giving the call letters
and all, one of the engineers came in with a
scrolled message just been talking with the ticker to KFI
(06:29):
in Los Angeles, and I interrupted the network orchestra to
say that there was a giant earthquake in Los Angeles
in February of nineteen thirty three. Gave whatever the information
they'd got, and they kept coming in with the bulletins.
We were supposed to go off the air at twelve o'clock.
At two o'clock in the morning, we were still giving bulletins.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
By that time.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Everybody that worked for who they all you found out
listened to the station, were in there. They were on
the telephones. Everybody in Iowa with a relative in California,
and that was everybody in Iowa was.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Calling and wanting to know what had happened of theirs.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
At about two o'clock in the morning, with a perfect
finish you couldn't have written yourself. The last message came
from KFI that said, we're getting out of this building.
We think it's going next. Well, that was a news broadcast,
but the swift moving world of radio WOC who became
Who's You've been told? Fifty thousand watt clear Channel, And
(07:24):
I found myself sponsored for a twice daily sports summary,
and I might say period, because we had a stock
ticker of that old fashioned kind with a tape that
spelled out the scores of baseball or basketball or football
or whatever was going on. But from there on it
was just up to me as to what I was
going to say to fill those two fifteen minute periods.
So I used to sneak out in the street and
(07:45):
buy the early edition of the Registered Tribune, the rival organization,
read the sports section, and go in and d live
fifteen minutes of sports news. All of us had the
right to express ourselves, and the freedom times extended to.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
My brother had just gotten out of college and he
came out to visit me. He was jobless, as was
everyone in those days. He was sitting in a studio
waiting for me to finish where once we would then
go to one of the more famous Des Moines institutions,
known as Moonlight In. It was a Friday night, and
the schedule said I was to fill it with records.
(08:22):
There was nothing coming from the network. In those days.
You went in and picked out your own records. So
we went in and we picked out all the college
songs we could find because the next day I'd be broadcasting.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
A football game from Iowa City.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And then we went on and I decided to interrupt
the records every once in a while and predict how
the games were going to turn out. On the following day,
and I noticed he was sitting across the desk waiting
and he was shaking his head no on some of
my predictions. So I turned on the microphone that was
in front of him and I said, my brother's here
in the studio and he doesn't agree with what I'm saying.
Who do you think is going to win that game?
And we argued and we played music. Arguing came easy.
(08:56):
We'd been doing it for years. And the funny thing
is we were next day, we were in Iowa City
at the game, and pretty soon this became a regular
feature of already debating how the games were going to
come out, and coming on Saturday at nights with the
scores of the games and giving our percentage and how
we'd done and which one was the winner and picking
(09:17):
the most victors. He went on from there to become
an announcer, and as you've heard, a program director and
finally senior vice president of McCann Erickson, I went on
earning an honest living.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
And you've been listening to Ronald Reagan tell one heck
of a story about how things used to be, that
story of his audition and how he got his first gig. Well,
that's just a beauty. When we come back more of
Ronald Reagan and his fiftieth anniversary celebration in nineteen seventy
four of the great powerhouse iheartstation. Who here on our
(09:55):
American Story? And we returned to our American Stories and
our final segment of Ronald Reagan's speech at the fiftieth
anniversary celebration of News Radio ten forty Wight Show in
(10:19):
Des Moines, Iowa. When we last left off, Reagan was
telling us how he got his job at Wight Show
and his life in sportcasting in the early days of radio.
Let's return to Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You know, I have to tell you I may have
even done the first instant replay.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
It's wonderful to be here.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
For this occasion, but to have it also coincide with
the Drake Relays, that great track classic of such national importance.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I broadcast them.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I broadcast them when it was snowing, and I broadcast
them when it was steaming heat. But I remember one
day we did it broadcast, and again it was pioneering.
We shared the Pen relays with NBC. Bill Stern was
at Penn and I was here, and we had warrior phones.
We could talk to each other and the audience could
hear all of it, and then he'd broadcast an event
(11:10):
and asked me what was coming up in Iowa, and
I'd tell him what was coming out up out here.
But all day long, I kept telling him, Bill, you've
got to get it back out here for the quarter mile,
because we got the greatest quarter mile stars in the
United States were bound to break a national, if not
a world record today, so get it back here for that.
So he got it to me in plenty of time,
just in time for the public relations man of Drake
(11:33):
University to bring in the president of Drake University that
gave a speech of welcome to our radio audience, and
he did, and I sat there and I watched the
quarter mile event go by, and when he left the studio,
I didn't have the nerve to tell our radio audience
that they'd missed the quarter mile event. I knew it
had to take about forty eight seconds, so I just
(11:54):
looked at my watch and I said, well, we're just
in time for the quarter mile, And with an empty
track in front of me in a dead silent crowd,
I broadcast for forty eight seconds brought him down the
stretch one two three the way they came in, and
if any listeners noticed a lack of background cheers, I
covered that by describing the crowd as awe struck.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
By the s.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Of course, I wasn't always that successful with things like that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
We did do baseball, and we did.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
It recreating it from telegraphic reports, and there was no monopoly.
Then there were a half a dozen other fellas broadcasting
the same game from the ballpark, and you had to
try to keep up with them, so the audience wouldn't
tune you out and get one of those fellas if
you were too far behind the pace of the game.
So when Curly Waddell god Rest his soul was sitting
on the other side of the glass would true the
(12:49):
headphones would get that dot and dash. He'd start typing,
and I'd start talking and the thing would come through
just in time. I'd say, the picture comes out of
the wind up here comes the pitch, and he he'
danned me a piece of paper.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Now you couldn't read it.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
You couldn't just suddenly scream s one sea and sell
a lot of wheaties. So you'd say, and it's a
strike call breaking over the outside.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Corner to a picture that and so forth and so on.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Well, one day it was in the ninth inning, the
Cubs and the Cards both contending for the pennant, nothing
and nothing, And I saw Curly start to type, and
I had Dizzy Dean in the mound, and I said,
dizz comes out of the wind up, here comes the pitch. Sure,
Curly was shaking his head no, but I thought he
just didn't like something. And I took the paper and says,
the wire's gone dead. I had a pitch on the
(13:36):
way to the plate. There was only one thing you
can do with that doesn't get in a score book.
I had him foul it off and I looked at Curly,
and Curly looked at me, and I just couldn't say
to that audience.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
And the ninth inning, we've lost our service.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We're going to give you a brief interlude of transcribe music,
So I said, disdean. I slowed him down a little.
I had him use the rosin bag a lot, and
I had him sake off signs at length. They wind up.
Finally let go with another pitch, and he fouled that
one off to the right, and then he fouled one
off back of the stands and then he fouled one
off back a third days and I described the fight
between the two kids trying to get the ball. Then
(14:12):
he fouled one off that just missed a home run
by a foot. Now I'm beginning to sweat because I
am beginning to set a world record for a man
staying at bat, and that is good to get in
the news. Till finally the nick of time. Curly sat up,
started typing and I started another ball in the way
to the plate, grabbed the wire and had said.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Jurgis popped out on the first ball pitched. But you know,
hr Gross.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
He had a little occasion when he overdid the informality
of who.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
He came in with the evening news and it was
my turn to put him on.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
He sat opposite me at the desk and I told
him that there was a change of plans. We had
a commercial coming on from the tropical room of the
Hotel Fort des Moines and he'd have.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
To get off early. He had a lot of news
and he didn't want to get off her.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I finally gave him the signa one minute, and he
kept shaking his head and reading news, and I gave
him half a minute and he kept on reading news. Finally, I,
just when he paused for breath, pushed the button and said,
we that's the news for this evening. We'd taken out
of the tropical room with the Hotel Fort des Moines.
Pushed the button. But when I pushed that button, not
only did the music come through from the tropical room,
(15:20):
but I'd also returned on his mic. And his first
move was to kick his chair across the room. And
he then used some forthright language that I'm sure he's
used with great success on some of his more stubborn
do nothing colleagues in the Congress. But the theme music
was underwriting this, and the local police journeyed to the
(15:41):
tropical room with the Hotel Fort des Moines and said,
you got some drunk in hear this? He said, you
better shut him up or we're closing the room. But
hr Gross and who kept on pioneering This station had
(16:02):
its own accredited war correspondence in World War II in
the Pacific and the European theaters. That great family of
listeners here in the Middle West heard at first hand
broadcast descriptions of the Battle of the Bulls and the
signing of the Surrender on the deck of the USS
Missouri in Tokyo Bay. And always with the new and
the different. There was an emphasis on service during the war.
(16:25):
WHO sold more than six million dollars in war bonds
to twenty five thousand investors in forty six states. There
was a clothing drive conducted for the destitute in the
war zones, and the news Bureau of WHO acted as
a clearinghouse the names of the needy foreign families. More
than a quarter of a million parcels were sent to Europe.
Radicals communists in Greece, attempting to sabotage this program, resorted
(16:49):
to burning down the post offices, but the people of Greece,
in gratitude for the neighborliness of the people of the
Midwest of America, named their streets some of their streets
WHO and des Moines and even Iowa. I've been reminiscing
about a half of decade of the half a century
(17:09):
that we're celebrating here to day. Now, perhaps in these
troubled times, I've touched upon something else, and I hope
so a little more. That freedom to pioneer that we
enjoyed as employees of WHO, was in keeping with the.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Spirit of those times.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
We didn't in the midst of the great world wide
depression that had toppled governments and changed national boundaries all
over the world, sit down and give up. There were
doom criers abroad in the land who said that we
come to the end of an era, and that a
way of life was ending. And yet here was a
(17:46):
brand new industry that had been born. Literally in that depression.
People very shortly were traveling with radio in their automobiles,
not just in their homes, and soon radio was in
our pockets.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
And the key to all this was freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Government we recognized and respected as a referee with certain
power to restrain. But that restraint was to restrain the
players in the game, to keep them from harming each other.
And I submit that that is government's primary responsibility still
that mainly.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And no other.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
We opened the West without an area redevelopment plan. We
rebuilt Chicago and San Francisco after the fires without urban renewal.
Now it's forty years later, it's time right now for
some other voices.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Voice of the Middle West.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Our voice is to be precise, to be raised in
behalf of the time tested principles of the past. Voices
that will rekindle the great ideals, the principles which have
set this nation apart and made it unique among all
the social structures that man has created so far in
his long climb from the swamp of the stars.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So thanks to Paul Manzel for sending us this audio,
and the great folks at news Radio ten forty who
for carrying this show and carrying it when very few
stations in this country did. And my goodness, we hear
everything we need to know about why Ronald Reagan was
such a great communicator, and so much of it had
to do with that radio career. The fiftieth anniversary of
(19:21):
who in Des Moines back in nineteen seventy four, here
on our American story
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