The Power of Radio

Even though this article is almost a week old, it struck a raw cord with me today. Many times we take for granted that there's a radio station in our communities, there to serve the community, especially in our time of need. It is a bond for a community when there is nothing else left to bond it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050910/ts_latimes/alifelinesentbyairwave

I remember growing up and listening to the shortwave band on my new boom box (this is 1982, by the way), hearing foreign voices and popular sounding songs with different voices, then I heard Voice of America, like some covert radio that gave in my opinion more honest news coverage than the US media. Then, after hearing French (or was it Italian?) spinning the new music by MichAEL JacksON (the emPHAsis on the last syllABles), I heard the sounds of Mardi Gras, live from the French Quarter in New Orleans on WRNO. Every night I would tune in and hear the lastest on the Krewe parties and the fun on Bourbon Street. That was the magic of radio.

And then there was the other magic. When the tornado siren would go off in town, and the bright sunny afternoon would turn black as the deep cloudy midnight, our family would run down to the basement, huddled in the corner with our candles and flashlights listening to our battery powered radio where a weather announcer from KICD gave a play-by-play of the storm's path and the destruction that it posed to the communities it approached. There were a couple of summers early in the 80s where almost every storm would bring down a couple of large trees in the community. And the summer of the tornados that hit Manson and Algona.

I remember when a fast acting storm threatened the Bill Riley Talent Search during Greater Rolfe Days one summer, right after the Manson tornado. The majority at the event didn't think twice to go to the library's basement that was a block away, instead of going to their homes that were just a couple of blocks further away. Since the library's basement wasn't ready to be an emergency shelter, we all sat like sardines in the dark without a radio and wondering what was happening around us. Thankfully, we were not hit by a tornado that day, and only tree branches and some rooftops suffered damage.

That is the power of radio. Like the announcer said in the article, radio fills time until we are needed in the community. Those times are not only times of suffering and fear, but also in our times of celebration.