My memories of radio began about 1939, when I was six years old. I have vague memories before that, of hearing Tommy Dorsey play "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" on the radio, but 1939 sticks out in my mind because my family was living in a very small wood frame house at that time and I can picture the radio in the corner of the room with my step father listening intently to the war news from Europe, sent directly over the Atlantic cable. I also remember Gene Autry singing "South of the Border" and Singing Sam singing and advertising Coca Cola.

Radio was very important to me in my child hood. I lived with my grand parents for several years in the early forties and they would conveniently go to bed by about 8:30 in the evening and I would do my home work sitting by the old Zenith radio while I listened to radio dramas taken from recent movies on Lux Radio Theater or The Screen Guild Players. On another night it would be comedy night with Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Edgar Burgen and Charley McCarthy. Some night's were owned by Amos and Andy, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, and Burns and Allen.

Then, interwoven with the other programs were the mysteries like, Inner Sanctum, Lights Out, The Shadow, and Dragnet.

Radio also had the day time "soap operas". In fact, that's where they started. Here is an example of a lead in to one of the popular "soaps". The announcer would always read the following introduction:

" Once again we present 'Our Gal Sunday'...the story of an orphan girl named Sunday...from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado. Who in young womanhood married England's richest, most handsome lord...Lord Henry Brinthrope. The story that asks the question...Can this girl from a little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?"

Saturday morning was kids' radio and my grandmother would fix me a bowl of Cream of Wheat while I listened to "Let's Pretend" (a reenactment of classical fairy tales), sponsored by, you guessed, Cream of Wheat

Running through all of radio in those "golden days", was music! The music of the "big bands", like Glenn Miller, Harry James, The Dorsey brothers, Guy Lombardo, Kay Kaiser, Artie Shaw, and every Sunday afternoon, "Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye". With all of these bands were the singers, Individuals and groups. The Ink Spots, The Mills Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Dinah Shore, the Andrews Sisters, Ish Kabibble and so many more.

In order to bring back your own

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