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Franco-American Stories
By Dick Gosselin
If only my Mothers cousin had worked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard instead of at the Radio Station, I would probably be retired now.  Angie St. Piere was my Mom's cousin through marriage.  She married one of my Mom's St. Pierre cousins.  She was a Republican Legislator from Rochester, N.H.  Probably the only Republican in our family but had such charm, everybody liked her.  Whether we were at Wells Beach  or at 149 High Street in Somersworth every Sunday after Mass and breakfeast we would sit around the radio like we were watching Groucho Marx.  Everyone would stare at the radio dial listening to Angie's voice.  She did a French program on WWNH-AM in Rochester throughout much of the 50's and early 60's.  She had a beautiful speaking voice and solid command of French.  She had an unpredictable variety of interesting things from her views on life to french music to household tips.

Being a conservative member of the New Hampshire Legislature her views were ultra conservative.  This one Sunday morning we heard her ranting about how women should not wear slacks.  Women were meant to wear dresses.  (she said the following in French) "Ladies if you're more comfortable wearing slacks when doing housework that's fine.  But, for goodness sakes when your husbands come home take off your pants.  (autez vous cullote).  Fortunately for her the owners and managers at the station didn't speak French.

I remember thinking WOW cousin Angie has the undivided attention of all of us in this room and she's at a radio station seven miles from here.  I reflected on the thousands of households who were doing the same, glued to the radio dial listening to Angie.  I was hooked at least for now to the phenomenon of radio. 

It also helped that my Aunt Bebette  with whom I was very close was a radio station groupie.  Radio was her companion as it was for many of us back when that's what radio was.   Now it's this corporate generic music box that moves people (except for News/Talk radio )to abandon it for... as I have done..... for Satelite radio and iPods. 

Aunt Bebette knew all of the announcers and when they were on.  She would tell me what they said and would send in my Birthday announcement to WTSN in Dover and WWNH in Rochester in time for air on that big day December 24th.   

The respect I observed they had for their cousin Angie, sitting attentively in front of the radio with a reverence heretofore reserved exclusively for Groucho Marx coupled with the admiration my closest Aunt had for radio announcers .....I was hopelessly hooked. 

I always went with my Grandmother and Aunts when they went shopping in Rochester because I knew we would be driving by WWNH.  Visible for a long stretch as Route 16 topped Rochester Hill I always hoped to get a glimpse of movment in the building.   It was overwhelming to me that there was a guy in there behind a microphone and whatever he said was instantly heard on thousands of area radios.   What a grand and glorious profession I thought.


The studio had such style.  Clearly a woman's touch had gone into the place.  This illustration is from a WWNH letterhead sent to me in 1965.  The stations call letters were a neon green tilted forward at a 35 degree angle approximately.  Martha Malory I believe was the matriach of the family that owned the station.  The disc jockey's wore red blazers when they did remote broadcasts from places like the Rochester Fair where they had a permanent booth adjacent to the big barn.  Martha did a Martha Stewart style advice show.  Seems to me she used a different air name than her own.  The Rochester Historical Society tells me they do not have pictures on file of this place.  What a shame.  The owners had the walls decked out with historic pictures of the place.  Among them, the ribbon cutting with the Governor in 1947 (Gov. Dwinell???) Inside there was a grand piano in studio "C."  That's where Angie recorded or did her show live.  Studios "A" and "B" were adjacent to "C."    It quickly deteriorated after it was sold.  It now serves as a Transmitter facility only.  There is a locked gate at roadside (Route 16) and a padlock on the door.  The place is accesible only to maintenance engineers.  There's no room for such classy facilities now that radio has taken on an annonymous generic juke box face.
I would pay a radio station these days if I could go on the air and say the warm radio was your companion trite little phrases of yestertyear like: "your radio host from Lakes to Coast" and "Broadcasting from high atop Rochester Hill." 

It was an F.C.C. Commissioner in the 1950's who called TV a "vast wasteland."  Today, save for news talk operations radio has become that vast wasteland.  Recall an episode of a recent Bill Moyers PBS documentary on how radio is now controlled by a few conglomerates.  The doc opened with the story of a train derailment in the Dakota's.  The cars contained toxic chemicals and there was a need to evacuate a large area.  No problem, call the radio stations and put an announcement on the air.  Nope, people who thought you could still do that were living in a time warp.   It was not do-able.  There was no one at the stations to answer the phone to air such an announcement.  The conglomerate that owned all the stations denies it but the fact is it wasn't do-able.  The stations, all of them owned by Clear Channel had turned into automated juke boxes.  The Republican controlled F.C.C. during the five year reign of Michael Powell (Gen. Colin Powell's kid) sold much of the finite eletromagnetic spectrum to corporate American Institutions like Clear Channel.  Stewardship of the limited frequencies of the airwaves and managing them in the public trust became a joke.  Powell like those who followed him with subsequent five year terms (both Republicans and Democrats) are now well paid lobbyists making money from the Industries they once regulated.   The radio biz I was once attracted to is no more.  It's understandably been replaced by the iPod.