Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [31]
Then I heard about the manager of a radio station there in Springfield who was described as “crazy about airplanes,” and it occurred to me that such a man just might be interested in having a former navy fighter pilot on his payroll. The station manager’s name was G. Pearson Ward, and the station was KTTS. Although I had never even been inside a radio station, I thought it might be fun and interesting to work in one.
I promptly made an appointment with Mr. Ward, and I left nothing to chance. I put on my naval officer’s uniform, pinned my wings of gold over my heart, and headed for KTTS. For some reason I’ve always remembered that Mr. Ward was nicely dressed, wearing a gray glen plaid suit, white shirt, and what appeared to be a silk tie, dark blue. He invited me to sit down in a comfortable chair near his desk and said, “So you were a navy fighter pilot?” During my telephone conversation with Mr. Ward when I made my appointment he had established that I had just been discharged from the navy and that I had flown fighters.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“What did you fly?”
I told him that most of my time was in the FM-2. It was the original F4F Wildcat with a larger tail and more powerful engine. However, as I explained to Mr. Ward, I had checked out in the F4U Corsair, been placed in a fighter pilot pool, and had the war not ended, I would have joined a seagoing squadron flying Corsairs.
Mr. Ward listened so intently to everything I said about airplanes that I got the distinct feeling that if he had been younger, he would have loved to have been at the controls of a Corsair himself during World War II.
After about thirty minutes of talking about dogfighting, dive-bombing, and carrier landings, I had my first job in radio. Mr. Ward did take me into a studio and have me read about one minute of sports copy, but that seemed almost secondary. I went home and told Dorothy Jo that I was going to work at radio station KTTS, and she asked a perfectly sensible question: “What do you know about radio?”
I answered honestly: “Absolutely nothing.”
• • •
I started out writing local news for news editor Bill Bowers, a former vaudeville hoofer who had become a really dedicated newsman. Also, I did a five-minute sportscast. It was sponsored by Hires Root Beer, and I opened it by saying, “Hire’s to ya,” in a cheery, happy voice, as if I were saying hello to a friend. The sportscast didn’t last long. But over a period of a year or so, I did news on the air; I became a staff announcer; I had a disc jockey show; I did anything and everything that I had a chance to do at the station.
As I have admitted, I’m tone-deaf. I was probably the only tone-deaf disc jockey they ever had in Missouri. Oh, probably not! But I faked it. I always had a copy of Down Beat magazine at my fingertips and told my listeners who was on drums, who was on the clarinet, who did this riff and who did that riff (by the way, what’s a riff?).
I did my first remote broadcast at KTTS. I had all my classes at Drury in the morning so that I could work the afternoon shift as an announcer. One day Mr. Ward called me and told me to stay at Drury after my last class because they were going to lay the cornerstone for the new field house and he wanted me to do a live broadcast of the ceremony. Mr. Ward said he was sending Homer Hubbel, one of our engineers, over with all of the equipment and I should meet Homer at the site of the future field house.
I said, “Yes, sir!” I was delighted. It was to be a live remote broadcast, my first one. Look out, Ed Murrow, here I come!
After my last class, I went down where the cornerstone ceremony was to be held, and there was Homer, all ready to get it on. As promised, Homer had all the equipment in his car. He gave me a hand microphone that had the call letters KTTS across the top and told me that we would go on the air live in about five