June 18, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before he became President, Ronald Reagan was a rising star in radio—a strapping young sports commentator at WHO in Des Moines. Here's the story of his early broadcasting career, told in his own words.
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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.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
That radio had on the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
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 was so
fat fascinating that the great motion picture theaters of the
day used to have to advertise that you could come
(01:06):
to the movies and not miss Amos and Andy, because
they'd interrupt the show.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The lights would go up and the screen.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Would go dark, and the 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 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.
(01:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Good theater requires.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
There was no way to recreate the pictures.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
For example, you could not 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.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But it was the creaking doors, the sound of.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The rattling chains, the hollow footsteps descending deeper and deeper
into the dungeons, and finally that last creaking door opening,
and 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
(02:39):
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
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 to get a job. All I wanted
(03:02):
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,
one of nature's most unforgettable gentlemen, sat there behind his
desk and said, where have you been. We've been announcing
for applicants for auditions, and we've just had an audition
and hired an announcer yesterday. This was too much for me,
(03:25):
after all the frustration, and I said, how the hell
does a fella 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
(03:47):
I told him and he said, 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 start broadcasting an imaginary football game and.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Make me see it. 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.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And I started with a chill.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Wind coming in through the end of the stadium and
the long blue shadows 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
(04:46):
golden words be here Saturday. We'll give you five dollars
in bus fareure broadcasting the 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
(05:08):
read the formal audition that he had taken, I blessed
myself for being a day late, because I never could
have 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. The network stations were on a
telegraph wire. Our engineers could all with the ticker dot
and dash Morse code talk to each other.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
And one night, while I was sitting.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
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 scrawled message, just
been talking with the ticker to KFI in Los Angeles,
and I interrupted the network orchestra to say that there
was a giant earthquake in Los Angeles in February of
(06:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
They were on the telephones.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Everybody in Iowa with a relative in California, and that
was everybody in Iowa was calling in wanting to know
what had happened to a 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.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
We think it's going next.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
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 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
(07:32):
kind with a tape that spelled out the scores of
baseball or basketball or football.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Or whatever was going on.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
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 buy the early edition of
the Registered Tribune, the rival organization, read the sports section,
and go in and ed lib fifteen minutes of sports news.
All of us had the right to express ourselves, and
the freedom times extended to air time. Now, my brother
(08:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
There was nothing coming from the network. In those days.
You went in and picked out your own records.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So we went in and we picked out all the
college songs we could find because the next day I'd
be broadcasting a football game from Iowa City. 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
(08:48):
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. We'd
been doing it for years. We did it. 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 Alred, debating how the games were
(09:10):
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 on which one was the winner
and picking 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.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
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 iHeart station. Who here on
(09:55):
our American Stories? 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
(10:19):
in 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 ask 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 at Drake
(11:32):
University to bring in the President of Drake University 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 looked
(11:54):
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 awestruck by the st Of course,
(12:23):
I wasn't always that successful with things like that. We
did do baseball, and we did 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
(12:45):
Waddell god Rest his soul was sitting on the other
side of the glass would true the 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' danned me a piece of paper.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
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 corner to a picture
that and so forth, and so on. Well, one day
it was in the ninth inning, the Cubs and the
Cards both contending for the pennant.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Nothing and nothing.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
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
way to the plate. There was only one thing you
(13:39):
can do 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 (13:47):
And the ninth inning, we've lost our service.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We're going to pray give you a brief innolude of
transcribe music, So I said, disdean.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I slowed him down a little.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I had him use the rosin bag a lot, and
I had him shake off signs at length.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
They wind up.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
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. Then he fouled one off
back a third base, and I described the fight between
the two kids trying to get the ball.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Then he fouled one off that just missed a home
run by a foot.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
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 to
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 Jurgis popped out on
the first ball pitched. But you know, hr Gross had
(14:41):
a little occasion when he overdid the informality of who.
He came in with the evening news and it was
my turn to put him on. 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 to get off early. He had a
lot of news and he didn't want to get off early.
I finally gave him the signa one minute, and he
(15:02):
kept shaking his head and reading news, and I gave
him half a minute and he kept on reading news.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Finally, I just.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
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 of 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,
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
(15:32):
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
tropical room with the Hotel Fort des Moines and said,
you got some drunk in here. That's he said, you
(15:53):
better shut him up, or we're closing the room. But
hr gross and who kept on pioneering this station had
its own accredited war correspondence in World War II and
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
(16:14):
signing of the surrender on the deck of the USS
Missouri in Tokyo Bay and always.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
With the new and the different. There was an emphasis
on service during the war.
Speaker 2 (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 w h O was in keeping
with the spirit of those times.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We didn't in the.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
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 brand new industry that had
been born. Literally in that depression. People very shortly were
(17:53):
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 too. All this was freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
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. We opened the West without an area
redevelopment plan.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
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 to the stars.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Well thanks to Paul Manzel for sending us this audio,
and the great folks at NewsRadio 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 Who
(19:22):
and 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.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
That radio had on the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
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 was so
fat fascinating that the great motion picture theaters of the
day used to have to advertise that you could come
(01:06):
to the movies and not miss Amos and Andy, because
they'd interrupt the show.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The lights would go up and the screen.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Would go dark, and the 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 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.
(01:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Good theater requires.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
There was no way to recreate the pictures.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
For example, you could not 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.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But it was the creaking doors, the sound of.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The rattling chains, the hollow footsteps descending deeper and deeper
into the dungeons, and finally that last creaking door opening,
and 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
(02:39):
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
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 to get a job. All I wanted
(03:02):
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,
one of nature's most unforgettable gentlemen, sat there behind his
desk and said, where have you been. We've been announcing
for applicants for auditions, and we've just had an audition
and hired an announcer yesterday. This was too much for me,
(03:25):
after all the frustration, and I said, how the hell
does a fella 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
(03:47):
I told him and he said, 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 start broadcasting an imaginary football game and.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Make me see it. 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.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And I started with a chill.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Wind coming in through the end of the stadium and
the long blue shadows 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
(04:46):
golden words be here Saturday. We'll give you five dollars
in bus fareure broadcasting the 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
(05:08):
read the formal audition that he had taken, I blessed
myself for being a day late, because I never could
have 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. The network stations were on a
telegraph wire. Our engineers could all with the ticker dot
and dash Morse code talk to each other.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
And one night, while I was sitting.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
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 scrawled message, just
been talking with the ticker to KFI in Los Angeles,
and I interrupted the network orchestra to say that there
was a giant earthquake in Los Angeles in February of
(06:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
They were on the telephones.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Everybody in Iowa with a relative in California, and that
was everybody in Iowa was calling in wanting to know
what had happened to a 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.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
We think it's going next.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
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 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
(07:32):
kind with a tape that spelled out the scores of
baseball or basketball or football.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Or whatever was going on.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
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 buy the early edition of
the Registered Tribune, the rival organization, read the sports section,
and go in and ed lib fifteen minutes of sports news.
All of us had the right to express ourselves, and
the freedom times extended to air time. Now, my brother
(08:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
There was nothing coming from the network. In those days.
You went in and picked out your own records.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So we went in and we picked out all the
college songs we could find because the next day I'd
be broadcasting a football game from Iowa City. 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
(08:48):
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. We'd
been doing it for years. We did it. 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 Alred, debating how the games were
(09:10):
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 on which one was the winner
and picking 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.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
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 iHeart station. Who here on
(09:55):
our American Stories? 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
(10:19):
in 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 ask 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 at Drake
(11:32):
University to bring in the President of Drake University 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 looked
(11:54):
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 awestruck by the st Of course,
(12:23):
I wasn't always that successful with things like that. We
did do baseball, and we did 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
(12:45):
Waddell god Rest his soul was sitting on the other
side of the glass would true the 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' danned me a piece of paper.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
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 corner to a picture
that and so forth, and so on. Well, one day
it was in the ninth inning, the Cubs and the
Cards both contending for the pennant.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Nothing and nothing.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
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
way to the plate. There was only one thing you
(13:39):
can do 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 (13:47):
And the ninth inning, we've lost our service.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We're going to pray give you a brief innolude of
transcribe music, So I said, disdean.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I slowed him down a little.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I had him use the rosin bag a lot, and
I had him shake off signs at length.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
They wind up.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
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. Then he fouled one off
back a third base, and I described the fight between
the two kids trying to get the ball.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Then he fouled one off that just missed a home
run by a foot.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
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 to
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 Jurgis popped out on
the first ball pitched. But you know, hr Gross had
(14:41):
a little occasion when he overdid the informality of who.
He came in with the evening news and it was
my turn to put him on. 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 to get off early. He had a
lot of news and he didn't want to get off early.
I finally gave him the signa one minute, and he
(15:02):
kept shaking his head and reading news, and I gave
him half a minute and he kept on reading news.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Finally, I just.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
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 of 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,
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
(15:32):
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
tropical room with the Hotel Fort des Moines and said,
you got some drunk in here. That's he said, you
(15:53):
better shut him up, or we're closing the room. But
hr gross and who kept on pioneering this station had
its own accredited war correspondence in World War II and
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
(16:14):
signing of the surrender on the deck of the USS
Missouri in Tokyo Bay and always.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
With the new and the different. There was an emphasis
on service during the war.
Speaker 2 (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 w h O was in keeping
with the spirit of those times.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We didn't in the.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
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 brand new industry that had
been born. Literally in that depression. People very shortly were
(17:53):
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 too. All this was freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
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. We opened the West without an area
redevelopment plan.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
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 to the stars.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Well thanks to Paul Manzel for sending us this audio,
and the great folks at NewsRadio 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 Who
(19:22):
and des Moines back in nineteen seventy four, here on
our American story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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