A Celebration of the Existence, Memory, and Enduring Influence of Jake Einstein's WHFS 102.3

First post on my First Blog -- and I've got major Blank Screen Syndrome. The interest that brings me here is radio. From my youngest days I enjoyed listening to it. I liked it much better than TV. The screen images are very confining to the imagination. Yet even as radio frees my eyes to look elsewhere, its words and music paint images in the theatre of my mind, much more vivid than any TV screen could render. 

As a freshman at the College of William & Mary, I became involved in its radio station, WCWM, in the fall of 1974. When I arrived, its 77-watt monophonic signal covered the campus and some of the surrounding city of Williamsburg. Three years later it was a 1.6KW stereo beacon of progressive free-form music, reaching into western Newport News. The station, and the experience of building and running it, launched several of my cohort into careers in Tidewater, Virginia broadcasting.

And it profoundly affected my life in ways that, forty years later, I am still just now coming to understand. I signed up my first week on campus. I went through training and earned a "prime time" rating in one semester (many took two or more). I spent two summers in Williamsburg, working for minimum wage in lousy summer jobs and committing many hours of my personal time to the station and its construction efforts. The first summer we built out the studios with new or refurbished equipment to ready it for stereophonic operation. That fall and winter we collaborated to put a construction permit application before the FCC to increase our on-air power. When the permit was issued in the spring, we celebrated and made our plans to carry out the construction that summer.

Along the way I had come to "own" the midnight to 3AM time spot on Friday Nights. There is no better time than that to be on the air in a college town. And the unique energy of a radio station -- unlike that of any other workplace -- crept into my being and is still with me to this day. As we finished out the transmitter and antenna installation, we began taking full advantage of the FCC's test period. From midnight to 6AM a station either licensed or under construction permit can go on the air at full power for equipment testing. The other engineer and I would take turns, together with two other volunteers, to run the station every night, putting things through their paces and. as it turned out, building our audience in the community. Our license came through just in time for us to be fully operational before school started in the fall of 1976. And when the fall Arbitron ratings survey results were published, we did well enough to make other area stations take notice. Two local "Album-Oriented Rock" (AOR) stations, WNOR FM99 and WMYK 93.7 (K-94) edged noticeably in a more progressive direction. They also hired several of our best as they graduated that spring.

And the inspirational force behind the creative energy was WHFS 102.3 FM. Many of us, myself included, would come "home" on breaks and listen to 'HFS -- and then return to practice the craft we heard there on WCWM's air. My life felt complete in a way it has yet to feel again since those days. And, as it turned out, those days were way too short. For my heavy involvement with the station and its engineering development had both sapped my academic performance and also exposed the mismatch between myself and a liberal arts education.  So I left and took my First-Class (General) Radiotelephone license out into the world of small-town radio.

That was a far cry from the college radio experience. It took me about two years to figure out that small-market radio was a dead end. So I moved to Northern Virginia, one of the best places in the world for a young adult to start a career. I looked for work in a number of professions, capitalizing on my engineering talent and problem-seeking mentality. One of the want ads I responded to was with WHFS 102.3. I actually interviewed with Jake Einstein himself. His first question to me: "As an engineer would you say you are more of a text-booker or a shirt-sleever. I answered to being mainly a shirt-sleever, preferring short sleeves that don't need to be rolled up. He liked that answer and offered me the job on the spot. He took me around and introduced me to, among other people, Weasel.

The problem was that it was only part-time, and I needed something full-time, so I passed on it and went into Information Technology instead. I returned to school, earned a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, and developed an expertise in Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence system design and construction.

But I also became disconnected from radio. Information Technology is good work, and it pays the bills. But even at its best it has nowhere near the vibrant energy of a radio station. To this day I miss that energy. I sometimes wonder how things could have gone if I had taken that job at WHFS and settled in Bethesda rather than Northern Virginia. Two paths diverged in a wood, and I did not take the road less traveled, and I wonder what a difference it would have made if I had taken if instead.

--jkw