March 22 , 2004 - Reunion in Name Only

For those who voted in what outfit I should wear to the reunion, I'd only had one vote (besides my own) as of the time that I left for State College, and that was for the white blouse and business-like skirt. I threw on a black velveteen top, as well, because I always get cold in the winter time.

Although there were several lectures and panels planned for the day, I had plans to attend only two of the events: the open house at WKPS, the current student station, and the reunion dinner that night.

My sister came with me to the WKPS open house, which is at the HUB now. We had trouble finding it, and when we did there were a lot of people crammed in the one small room.

The station appears to consist of one large room with a few racks of CDs. Most of their music, unless they bring it themselves, is in a computer data bank. They did, however, have a turntable and a few vinyl records. I joked with other alumni that they'd put those out just for our benefit.

While we were there they did a couple on-air exposures and had us shout out, which was kind of fun. But it was too crowded to really see anything. I think I might come back at another time, when I'm visiting my sister.

My sister occupied herself watching fish in the fish tank.

Some of the other alumni and they were saying, "I wonder what happened to huge record library."

"You don't want to know," I told them.

I was there when they moved to James building, and I know a lot of those records were scrapped (if not rescued).

They didn't have room for them at the new station, and at that point they were trying to make room for CDs, which was the newest newest thing.

For those who are already confused, here's a brief history of student radio at Penn State: after WPSC went under in 1932, the university lacked a station until 1953. That's when WDFM went on air, with the help and assistance of Speech professor David Mackey. Students in those pioneering days joked that the call letters stood for "We'd Die For Mackey."

In 1984, the call letters were reassigned to WPSU. A year later, under faculty advisor Dave Dzikowski, the station became an NPR affiliate, splitting programming between NPR programs and music, news and information programs run by student and community volunteers.

In 1991, the station moved from 304 Sparks on campus to the James Building, a smaller Penn State owned building located in downtown State College. The student programming was phased out by 1995 and a new student station, WKPS (The Lion) begun on campus in 1995.

Shortly after arriving at the Nittany Lion Inn for the evening's festivities, I began to suspect my hopes of catching up with old friends and colleagues was slim. Most of the people hobnobbing over drinks appeared to be from earlier generations, with those closest to my age having graduated in about 1981 or 1982. I found this out by talking to people as I worked my way through the room.

I drifted over towards the food and found, standing near the table, Mike Walsh, who'd been the contact person for that afternoon's open house. I talked to him about what the station is like today, which is how I found out about the songs being primarily on computer. Their editing is done digitally, and any production work they need to do is primarily done in the mornings when they're airing taped programs.

As I was talking to the current WKPS student participants and recent graduates, somebody drifted over to me who not only looked familiar but who also greeted me with a friendly smile.

"Hey, Alyce! Good to see you!" he said. I surreptitiously read his name: Robert Egan. It sounded familiar but I just couldn't place it.

"When did you get involved with the station," I asked, thinking that maybe he'd just been starting my final year or something. Turns out he had joined closer to 1996, when the new student station, WKPS, was broadcasting.

I had a flash of insight. "Do I know you through my sister?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said cheerily. We talked about how cool my sister is for awhile, and shared some stories about our involvement at the station. He urged me to come down sometime and check it out, and promised to get me a copy of the show they'd done today with the alumni.

Rob is a very outgoing guy, and he'd either befriended people by chatting them up during the cocktail or already knew some of the other alumni, because he got us invited to share a table with the crew who had been there from about 1978-1982.

Because of this, we got to hear some great stories. One guy, Ed Rokochy, I think was his name, was telling me about how he'd running a live sports talk program, and they had Joe Paterno, head Penn State football coach on. This was a huge deal, as you might imagine, Joepa being something of a Penn State deity.

The show was operated on seven-second delay, because they took live calls and wanted to prevent any bad language getting over the air. In those days, in order to operate on seven second delay, they ran the sound board through the Apex reel-to-reel machine and then on air.

But something was going wrong with the setup that night, and Ed thought the show wasn't going over the air. He started swearing, "Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!" But the show, was in fact, airing live. What's more, it also echoed! So that people down in the local bar, tuned in to hear their sports deity, heard "Bitch-bitch-bitch, bitch-bitch-bitch, bitch-bitch-bitch."

When Ed and his buddies were working at WDFM, they used to do live remotes. Someone passed around some pictures from one of those events, broadcasting the annual Spring Week concert, Moving On. They giggled as they pointed to people's pictures and then told me who they were today.

I had heard about these live remotes, but they weren't doing it any more by the time I joined. It was the stuff of legend, especially a story about how once they'd decided to broadcast a band that was playing on the grassy campus mall outside the radio station. Their improvised solution: hanging a microphone out the window with a really, really long extension chord!

One of the people we'd all known was "Cosmic" Ray Cromie. He'd been involved in the station since the 1970s and apparently was very much the same then, except without the dreads. Ray is a perpetual student who has at least two bachelor's degrees, at least one master's degree and, I believe, a Ph.D. He's well-known for his eclectic musical taste and for his laid back, new age type on air delivery.

He showed up later, even wearing a suit, and I gave him a hug and told him he was the only person there I'd actually worked with at the station. And the irony is, I could have had that sort of reunion just by visiting State College and going to the library or walking around town. Sooner or later, you always run into Ray.

The people at my table were great people; the men and women had a familiar feel to them, because they were so much like the people I'd worked with at the station. But although I enjoyed hearing their reminiscences, the more I sat with them the more I missed the people I had known at WPSU.

(My apologies in advance for any misspellings: it's been awhile.)

People like Raj Thiruvungadam, who taught me a lot about show planning and script writing, and Pat Urban, who taught me how to edit. People like Jonas Hunter, who taught me a lot of production room skills by letting me watch him when he engineered interviews.

People like Alison Matacheck, a creative force to be reckoned with; and Andy Piaschek, the thoughtful and soft-spoken avant garde show host; or my friend Paul Pritchard, who worked on my staff and whose dry British humor was always so much fun to bounce my energy off; the New Music staffers Matt Wysocki, Russ Pownell and Linda Novack, among hundreds of others; programming wonder Ann Gorman; Metal Machine monster-DJ the incongruously sweet-natured Jeff Hochberg; the extremely driven and talented station president Jeff Ballou; the hardworking, indefatigable program manager Rich Scheffer; Rubber Chicken Comedy Closet compatriots, Aaron Higgins, Brian Baxendell, Steve Ciabatoni, Steve Miller, Lawrence and a half dozen others.

There was jack-of-all-trades Don Klees, who hosted my show for awhile, Jacqui Ackerman, the first host of my show when it was Before the Dawn; Brad Bass, who actually developed the Before the Dawn concept and then turned the enterprise over to me; my whole Before the Dawn/Caverns of Your Mind staff.

And then there were guys like Ed, who did the Roots Vibrations show, with the lights turned down and standing up at the microphone, all the while talking softly in a fake "island" accent. And there were my buddies Barley, who was actually from the Caribbean, and Jose Roman, who talked me into going backstage to interview Ziggy Marley.

And then there were the community volunteers, like Bob Cole and Asa Berlin, the classic show gurus who taught me a lot about radio and about life; Lee Gruver, the classic rock goddess; Hector Flores and Steve Taxman, the jazz experts. My man Roscoe, who taught me about blues and the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band. And of course, Tina Hays, the folk phenom.

From the people I spoke to at the radio reunion, there seemed to be a great misunderstanding about what went down during my time. They seemed to think that NPR came in and killed the station, killed the student involvement, killed the creative energy. In their day, they'd fought NPR coming to Penn State, fearing that it would completely subsume student input.

Yes, there was some tension from figuring out how to blend the two purposes of public station and student station. But I enjoyed working with people in the community. I enjoyed being challenged to meet a more "professional" standard, and I learned a lot more than I probably would have learned at a typical student station.

It was a great, big, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family.

They showed a video at the dinner, supposedly a retrospective of student radio at Penn State. They had apparently asked people to provide photos and sound checks, but I hadn't known anything about it. I could have shared quite a bit with them.

So the video jumped from about 1981 to 1996 and the founding of WKPS. It was terribly sad in a way: my crew had been entirely forgotten. I'm not going to let that happen. I understand they're archiving materials on the history of student radio, so I'll provide them with what I can, as well as some memories from the time.

If I dig through my papers from college, I'm sure I'll find plenty.

They had somehow done a miscount and didn't have my vegetarian lasagna ready for me when they brought the food out. I said I was willing to wait, so I did. Everybody was trying to help me out by giving their asparagus and stuff like that. It was nice of them.

After a couple speeches by alumni who'd made good in the radio realm, they took some official pictures. They were doing it by decades, which didn't exactly work for me (1988-1992). The people at my table urged me to be in the 1980s picture with them, because, they said, it would make them seem younger. So I agreed.

But then I figured I ought to be in the 1990s picture, too (shown above). After all, Ray appeared in every picture from the 1970s on.

At the end of the evening, a guy wearing a Three Stooges tie, with spinach stuck in his teeth, was talking to me and Rob about the station today. I just kept quiet and let him think I was younger than I was.

All in all, I did get something useful out of the evening. I got to hear some terrific stories from the days before I worked there. I got to here from enthusiastic students who are determined to continue and improve upon Penn State student radio, and I learned that I can play some small role in helping to preserve the legacy of my days there.

Plus, it doesn't hurt the ego at all to be mistaken for someone six or seven years younger than I am!

More from this weekend:

March 23, 2004 - Dinner with Frank

More Penn State reminiscences:

May 28, 2003 - Urban Spelunking

November 6, 2003 - Penn State of Change

November 7, 2003 - Radio Days

Dedicated Idiocy: A Personal History of the Penn State Monty Python Society

Moral:
You can't always get from you want, but you can hear some great stories anyway.