A voice from the past last month reminded me that this magazine was not my first start-up media adventure.

Twenty-five years ago, I went to work as the first news director of the first radio station in Mercer County, Ill. – WRMJ FM, 102.3.

Located in the county seat, Aledo, WRMJ signed on the air June 12, 1979. John Hoscheidt was station manager, and still is. The rest of our first staff included copywriter Lin Thurman, salesman Jim Vandiver and program director/morning announcer Dave Hutchins.
Hoscheidt called because he’s trying to contact all original staff members and former WRMJ employees to invite us to the station’s 25th anniversary party this month. His call triggered a host of my memories of the station’s early days, as we were all working hard to help establish the station in the community.

It was particularly challenging to create a radio news department from scratch in a 154-year-old county that was used to relying on the county’s weekly newspaper for local news.

Just getting up at 4 a.m. every day was a challenge for a night owl like me. To be on time for my 6 a.m. newscasts each weekday, I had to leave our home in New Boston before the sun even thought about rising. The drive to Aledo took about 25 minutes if you obeyed the speed limit.

On the way to work each day, I stopped at the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office to check the overnight arrest and investigation reports. Then it was on to the station to call news sources, read the Associated Press wire and write and broadcast the news. After a few months of running myself ragged trying to cover most of the county’s town meetings, I was able to enlist several local newspaper correspondents to report for WRMJ, too. We had a brief training session on how to write their "voicers" and call them in for the next morning’s news. John said one of those ladies we originally trained still reports for the station.

During the 18 months I spent at WRMJ, my hours were long and hard on my family. The work was intense and the pay was on the paltry side. But there was one thing I loved about the job – it was never boring. If I get to attend the 25th reunion it will be great fun to reminisce about those wild and crazy days with John, Lin and Dave.

But I’m going to make room for one of those memories here.

A couple of months after WRMJ went on the air, we learned that President Carter would be coming to New Boston on Aug. 21, 1979, aboard the Delta Queen steamboat.

Carter had embarked on a seven-day vacation/campaign voyage on Aug. 17 from Lambert’s Landing, Minn., en route to St. Louis.
National television networks CBS, ABC and NBC were taking turns placing a news team aboard the Delta Queen with the president each day. ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson was the first person we saw on the big paddle wheeler when it arrived at Lock 17 in New Boston with its calliope merrily tooting at 11:20 p.m. Aug. 21.

A crowd of about 100 area residents had caravaned through the river bottom in the middle of the night to see the president. When Carter got off the boat and walked along the railing separating him from the crowd to shake hands, I was able to tape record the sounds of the scene and welcome the president to New Boston on behalf of WRMJ. My 15-year-old son, Schenk, accompanied me to get his first close look at a U.S. president. It was a night neither of us will forget.

After spending about 20 minutes with the crowd, Carter went back to his quarters on the Delta Queen. The crowd was about to disperse when Donaldson suddenly appeared on an upper deck of the boat, sipping something clear and bubbly-looking from a champagne glass. It was odd to see the normally serious-looking reporter relaxed and smiling as he exchanged pleasant remarks with people still gathered near the boat.

When he emptied his glass, he looked at it, then grandly tossed it into the crowd and someone caught the souvenir in mid-air. The reporter then went back in the boat but quickly reappeared and repeated the scene. This time, he also amused himself and his "audience" by singing a few bars of, believe it or don’t, “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” He then tossed another empty glass to the crowd, toddled back inside the boat and did not return.

Perhaps inspired by Donaldson, a few of the deck hands started chatting with those of us still there and tossed Delta Queen matchbooks into the crowd. When one of them dropped something that broke a window of the boat, a bunch of Secret Service guys materialized and put an end to the festivities. But, it was fun while it lasted.

Thanks for memories like those, WRMJ and everybody I worked with there. Happy 25th anniversary and may you have many, many more. I’ll be listening to you from time to time on the Internet at www.wrmj.com.

 

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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