It amazes me. People still remind me of our broadcasting beginnings way back during my first years as a humble professor at Michigan Tech (year not recalled – but at least around the 50s after a stint in the military and ready to turn a new page in the Groves of Academe). No official training, but I needed a job and the Humanities Department needed someone to teach in Speech and Communication Skills – a happy situation.

The department was accepted as a necessary evil on a Tech campus, but we appreciated the opportunity to prove our worth – we few neophytes stationed in a former home at the West end of the campus. My office was on the second floor, next to the room in which I taught the basics in writing to former military men with no desire to learn how to communicate in all the right ways, and I just beginning to learn the basics in teaching.

I sat at my desk, waiting with thumping heart for the sound on the steps to the second floor as they neared my door. Men, most of them older than I, entered, glanced down at me (textbook in hand, trying to look officious in suit and tie), and settled into chairs and desks. My first day was spent in the course introduction while it became obvious that all the men wanted to know was how I would grade them; so I explained my system, based on the writing they would do for me – one-page assignments based on a composition text book and lectures.

OK so far, until a student raised his hand to ask if a word in the text was a noun or adjective. I gulped, looked at the clock nearing the end of the hour, and said I’d discuss it at our next meeting, then headed to my office to do some searching for a satisfying academic explanation.

I did not sleep well that first night, but with a battery of supplementary books (borrowed from a more trained faculty member who hovered kindly over me in our offices) and with tons of “guts” made it through that first term without totally failing as a faculty member, and moved hesitantly into the next term.

With plenty of guidance from my cohorts, I made it through to vacation to the next term, picked up new courses in speech, and became comfortable with them with practice – then off to other courses in speech; I became the sole official speech teacher, given some freedom in developing the speech department and with some added confidence became a bonafide teacher.

The rest was a 42 year travel to new courses in speech and radio, two courses in the history of film and one in photography. I left as a full professor on to – what? Bigger and better things that included a new career involving radio broadcasting, a station that grew to 100,000 watts stereo in stature, still flourishing I’m happy to say as part of the growing NPR network.

Glancing back at those developing, stumbling years (as the Humanities Depart struggled however successfully to prove its validity) we plied our talents to supplement the sciences in any way possible. When the Techies presented annual show-and-tell events to the town community, we would supply efforts in little theatrical events or hold contests in art. We dug in – and held and developed.

For me, the challenge to contribute in my way was endless – most successfully for me when I clung with my metaphoric claws to turn our faint help with our original humble radio equipment to supply interesting Humanities/Technological events – from short programs delivered through the town radio stations and then (with the technical help of a few “techies” and approval from President Smith) developed the beginnings of a 10 watt on-air FM station in the bowels of an on campus abandoned water tower with talk shows and classical music – heard as far away as Calumet, some 10 miles away.

Success pushed us farther. We grew to 50 watts, then 250, then 550, and on, until luck and political approval brought us to our present 100,000 watts stereo; we could be heard in FM from parts of Canada to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and, of course, the entire Upper Peninsula.

There were the normal roadblocks along the way, but the station continued successfully to its joining with 95 other national similar radio stations which banded together to form and become national. NPR (National Public Radio) was born.

The rest, as they say, is history.