Alumni Messages
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Dave Beumer Class of '69 Hi. I was browsing the web and came across the WHHS web page. I was chief engineer of WHHS my junior and senior years 1968 and 1969. At the time the big deal was 20th Anniversary of WHHS. Some Historical trivia: When we went on the Air in 1949, FM broadcasting was so new the station had to pay $1.00 fee to the holder of the patent for FM broadcasting - Edwin Howard Armstrong. Somewhere in the station's archives, there is the original letter from Edwin Armstrong giving the station permission to use his technology. At the time I left it was framed and hanging in our office. The other interesting happening in '68 - '69 was the retirement of our transmitter of 20 years, made by General Electric. There was a single vacuum tube that went bad and would have cost us over $6,000. We opted to buy a new Gates transmitter for roughly $4,000. Hope I'm not boring you folks -- I'm glad to see the station lives on. Best of luck to you all.
Bill Pulver Class of '70 Hi, everyone. I was browsing the Mid-Atlantic Radio Pages and came across a link to WHHS, so I dropped on by. I was an engineer at the station 1967-1970, and along with Bruce Margolis followed Dave Beumer as Chief Engineer in 1970. (Dave, if you see this, drop me a note--I well remember that RCA transmitter and its dying days!) The most amusing memory (that I can talk about) involved a PSA transcription we received one day. We got several PSA recordings each week, on 16" transcriptions (vinyl-coated aluminum discs, similar to records but larger). This particular one--I think it contained about two dozen public service announcements for the American Cancer Society--was fairly unremarkable until we got a telegram(!) from the group that sent it out. They advised us that we should not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES air it. Of course, we *dove* for the cabinet that transcription was filed in, and were *overjoyed* to find that instead of PSAs, the record contained several unexpurgated Lenny Bruce monologues--monologues that to this _day_ can't be aired on the public airwaves! The time I spent at WHHS was some of the most fun and most educational in my life. It contributed to who I am today, and I look back on it very fondly.
