It has been said that we can tell a lot about people by the company they keep; but maybe we should look instead at what they keep on their desks.
What’s on yours?
This thought was prompted by a little piece of Lucite that I have at hand. I received this paperweight from a reader very early in my time with Radio World and have treasured it.
Embedded in the plastic is a steel disk with rusted aviation orange paint around its perimeter. There’s an image of a tower also embedded, and the legend: “KDKA Radio AM 1020, World’s First Commercial Radio Tower, 1920–1995” and at the bottom “Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.”
According to a 1996 post on Antique Radio Classified this tower originally stood in Saxonburg, Pa., and was moved in 1939 to Allison Park. The 718-foot structure was felled in 1994. Small slices of a tower leg were placed in Lucite and sold for $20 to benefit the hospital.
Nothing says “radio” (or “Pittsburgh” for that matter) like KDKA. I hope they raised a lot.
You can see more images of these paperweights if you Google around. Maybe you even have one. I feel that this little token helps connect me to the roots of our medium.
Another keepsake is a leather belt buckle with the call letters WHN on it.
When I was a teenager listening to country music in the New York City area, I called in and won a belt buckle and actually got on the air (come to think of it, this was my first time on the radio anywhere).
I lost my buckle when a girlfriend and I split, and I’d given up on it until I mentioned it here in an editor’s column more than two decades later.
Jim Nedelka, formerly of WHN, blew me away by sending me another WHN belt buckle from his personal keeping, an early example of how generous Radio World readers can be. And in this case the memento is a much more personal connection to my own radio history.
Do you have something connected to radio that is nifty, historic or meaningful on your desk or in your office? (Steve Shultis of New York Public Radio keeps a section of the Alford FM antenna from the Empire State Building in his office. Radio geeks unite!)
Email me with a picture to [email protected].
