A few loose ends

This is the building that once was home to WMBG, WCOD and WTVR. Now it is home only to the television station. (Don Dale photo, 2009)

In the caption to the image in my last post, I talked about the architectural destruction visited upon the old WMBG-WCOD-WTVR building a few decades ago. What was originally an award-winning Art Deco architectural gem is now a mish-mash of conflicting styles. Gone are the 1930s glass bricks; they've been replaced by plate glass. What would an architectural historian call the result? With those inappropriate and indecorous white columns, maybe the label should be Art Deco Plantation. I was out running errands this afternoon and shot this picture so you could see exactly what I mean.

And while I'm catching up on loose ends, let me say something that every blogger says sooner or later: I am finding the connections being made through this blog to be fascinating -- and heartwarming.

As I began blogging, the family responded first. I'd call my niece Terry and she'd want to know more about long-dead relatives, even the ones not on her side of the family. I was at her house for dinner the other night, and she was showing me intriguing pictures of, and diplomas earned by, family members on her mothers' side, people who are not related to me. My nephew Mike and I and his wife went for dinner a few weeks back and talked about family stories. Three hours later, still talking, we realized we were virtually the only patrons left in the restaurant.

I ran into my brother Bobby and his wife, Camilla -- along with their daughter, Annette -- at Costco a few weeks back. We talked about the blog and my mom's recipe for raisin-coffee-nut frosting. Annette and her mother reminded me that when Annette was a child and would visit us, my mom would always make cinnamon toast just for her. Annette still has fond memories of my mom's cinnamon toast.

My cousins Mary Francis and Ellie, my mother's sister's children, and I are planning to meet so that I can see additional research that Ellie has done on the Nichols family. Mary Francis e-mailed me a picture of our great-grandmother Nichols. I never knew such a picture existed before I started blogging about where I came from.

Now that I'm writing about my years working for WMBG-WCOD-WTVR, I'm hearing from old friends who worked in Richmond radio back in the day. Tom Ogburn worked at the AM station a few years after I left for the Air Force. By the time he started, Wilbur Havens had sold the stations to Roy H. Park Broadcasting, and WMBG was re-named WTVR-AM. Tom is now a TV engineer, and he has offered to put me in touch with somebody who can transfer my old WTVR-TV 2-inch videotapes to DVD. Most 2-inch videotape machines have now gone the way of the dinosaurs -- much like what's happening to VHS tapes.

My friend John Valentine, who also worked at WTVR-AM in the early 70s and, like me, longed to work for WLEE when he was a kid, founded AudioImage recording studio in Richmond about three decades ago. But he was working at WRVQ-FM in the mid-70s when Q94 took on WLEE and left WLEE in the dust. We had a long telephone conversation last night, reminiscing about radio. Q94 operated out of the same building on Church Hill that housed WRVA-AM, "the 50,000 watt voice of Virginia." The two stations' studios were adjacent. John told me he used to crank up the speakers in the Q94 studio while, just down the hall, Lou Dean was on the air with his soothing and much-loved all-night show. Lou's show appealed to, shall we say, a more sedate audience. John told me last night that he introduced himself to an audience recently as "the man who played bass for Lou Dean." John and I are getting together soon to transfer some of my old reel-to-reel tapes of the WMBG days to CD. A reel-to-reel tape machine is as hard to find as a rotary phone these days, but John has a good one at AudioImage.

I haven't talked to Lou Dean or Harvey Hudson lately, although I've run into both occasionally over the years. Lou was on the air all night at WRVA from 1957 to 1977, a long time in radio years. I remember listening to his show when I was in the Air Force in Germany in the late 1960s -- the WRVA signal was that strong. I'd be getting out of bed at dawn as he'd be beginning his nighttime broadcast six time zones away in Richmond. It was comforting to listen to a voice from back home.

WMBG might have been a thorn in WLEE's paw in the early 60s, but I have always admired Harvey Hudson as a broadcaster who combined an old-school style, a modern sensibility, and an unflagging amiability on the air. His morning WLEE broadcasts with his partner, Lud Sterling, were a staple when I was growing up. It's good to hear "Harvey Hudson's Passing Parade" from 9 to 11 a.m. on WLEE, now broadcasting not at 1480 AM but at 990 AM. And, yes, I still wish I had had the chance to work for him.

And I'm still in touch with people I worked with at American Forces Television in Germany in the late 1960s. John Wild and Chuck Minx, with whom I worked at Spangdahlem Air Base and AFTV-22, have read the blog and prompted me to remember a few stories. I'll be telling them soon. Tom Scanlin, who was the commander of Detachment 3, 7122nd Support Squadron, and was thus in charge of AFTV-22, is an e-mail correspondent these days. He stuck with the Air Force and retired as a lieutenant colonel. John and Chuck will remind me of making American TV in Germany's Eifel Mountains, and Tom will provide the details when I write about our AFTV live satellite broadcast -- the first ever there was -- of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The connections are there, and I hope more will come. The technology has changed dramatically since the 1960s, but the world seems like a smaller place. Family, old friends and colleagues are now scattered all over the globe, but they're nevertheless there to give me a hand as I revisit the past.