Thanks to all who wrote to me about my recent column “I Love the Sticks” in which I talked about the romance of broadcast towers, including my memories of watching the sun set behind the towers of WNRK and of visiting the array of WDEL/WSTW in the middle of the night.
It was particularly delightful to hear from the man who gave me my first paying job in radio, Al Campagnone, former owner of WNRK. He hired me for weekend work circa 1979 or ’80.
“Your article brought back good memories,” Al wrote me. “Know what you mean when you see radio towers. I had the same affection for them myself — guess it’s a broadcast thing. WNRK was a big part of my life and I loved being able to bring many hours of fun to our listeners in Newark. It truly was a sad day when the three towers came down.”
Ed Pajewski, who now runs low-power FM station WITG in Ocala, Fla., told me he was born and raised in Newark, Del., and had fond memories of sitting with his mother on snowy winter mornings listening to WNRK to hear if his school was closed.
He told me the station inspired him to become an amateur radio operator and to go into broadcast engineering. He later moved over to running an IT company but now he’s back engaging his passion with the LPFM. “I get to marvel at the 320-foot tower that I share with Bible Broadcasting Network,” he said.
Our friend Bill Baker of Information Station Specialists said, “I loved your tower piece and can totally relate. I grew up in the shadow of Crosley’s ‘big one’ on AM700 in Southern Ohio. And I, too, use to bore females with musings about directional arrays.”
And Robert Richer, another longtime RW supporter, thanked me for sharing memories of watching towers in a cornfield at sunset, but he added: “I must say that the thousand-footer that I went up inside its elevator at a Dallas antenna farm shore gave me religion.”
Yowza. The only high elevator I’ve traveled in was a construction elevator on the side of One World Trade, courtesy of the late John Lyons. But that was enclosed, so I was mostly spared the knee-knocking that would have accompanied a trip up an exposed thousand-footer (not to mention a 2,000-footer).
I say “mostly” because I had to swallow hard before stepping across the gap between the elevator car and the building. John took great delight in scaring the willies out of me.
I’ll share more reader memories about towers soon. And I love hearing about your own experiences with the romance of working in and around radio. Email me anytime at [email protected].
