WOSU Radio Lectures from OEJRC

The OEJRC (Ohio Junior Emergency Radio College) is obscure beyond obscure. Ohio University was way in the lead for pushing radio as a teaching medium. In 1935 George W. Rightmere, University President was already mourning its misuse. He thought the FCC (then only 1 year old) could mandate some high-brow educational use. To quote him exactly:

"Most of the public are articulate, and must be so concerning their objections to programs and somehow it seems to me to be within the province of the commission [FCC] to give voice to these people thru  prescriptions and regulations of a sensible and constructive kind."

He wasn't alone. John C. Futrall the president of U. Arkansas in Fayetteville and George Norlin, president of the University of Colorado were both as vocal, perhaps more so. In that environment their campus stations were encouraged to innovate in this arena. This was critically important in the great depression, when affording education was an impossibility, a distant priority behind food, water and clothing. That's the "E" in OEJRC . It stands for Emergency, because from their point of view, it was. Thus came into being the Ohio Junior Emergency Radio College (OEJRC ).  It was set up set up in January 1934 at the Ohio State University as a part of the Ohio emergency schools program.

They broadcast college level classes on WOSU-AM with university staff such as the above Prof. Arthur H. Noyes (who also wrote a couple history books). I can affirm the 1934 date as those calls were introduced on Sept.1, 1933 prior to that their callsign was WEAO, on 570. [They moved to 820 in 1941] Their mimeographed lessons were distributed free by request. Over 1,700 students enrolled. One source claimed that only 55 passed the course requirements. Ohio kept up the program anyway. the were home to The Institute for Education by Radio which held it's Annual Conference at Ohio State University from 1930 to 1953.

According to the book Growth Of An American Invention by Thomas Diener, Classes were taught in psychology, Home-making, French, English, Philosophy, Education, Engineering and Art appreciation. But I just got a hold of two of those mimeographed lessons and those are for History and Spanish lectures dating to 1934. Clearly Mr. Diener does not have a complete list. I have begun scanning them and the first is below. It runs 32 pages and comes in at a tidy 3 MB 60 MB. 

**************UPDATE**************

I re-uploaded the doc at a much higher resolution to improve readability. 

OEJRC Lecture: HISTORY 

by Prof. Arthur H. Noyes

DOWNLOAD HERE

William Lucious Graves

I find myself drawn to the smallest, most obscure and irrelevant figures in radio. Most maddening are the ones I never write about. Despite persistent research what I discover most often is that the figure is too obscure to have been written about and all those with first-hand knowledge are most-often deceased.

It's been almost a century now in the great history of radio, and almost anyone that ever heard "Uncle" Billy Graves read poetry on 820 WOSU-AM is probably dead. Professor William Lucious Graves was born in 1893 and died in 1943. He lived just long enough to see the radio the fledgling newborn grow into it's golden era. And more importantly he got to be apart of it. WOSU was on 570 at the time. Youngstown’s WKBN paid for WOSU-AM to move its frequency from 570 to 820 kilocycles in March 1941.

I read the book The Thurber Album by James Thurber and almost missed the radio connection. The chapter dedicated to Graves includes no reference to radio nor the WOSU calls. But in the Photography Gallery, on an unnumbered page was a single image. The caption said:

"Professor Billy Graves was a popular brodcaster whose audiences loved to hear him read prose and poetry over the air."

It dosen't mean it's true of course. But the mic is read, it's not a posed image. He was a writer of poetry, and a brodcaster. He may have been unpopular, but how can we know now? In 1955 A.G. Preist mentioned him in a Beta Theta Pi article.

"William L. (Billy) Graves, Ohio State 1893, warmly devoted Beta who is said to have visited our Theta Delta chapter house more than 5,000 times, was toastmaster at one of the convention banquets of the early ’30’s, after having spent the Summer in England."

He was Beta Theta Pi back when fraternities meant more than innovative drinking games. He taught English, and fiction writing. He was uptight enough to dislike the brutish prose of Hemmingway when it was new. In 1924 Colleris magazine published an article by Frederick L. Collins titled "Everywhere I find a Pal." It was the public debut of Graves. But others disregarded his writing as "sweetly innocous." WOSU-AM by comparison is the oldest continually-operating radio station in Columbus. In 1920, a license was issued to The Ohio State University for experimental station called 8XL.

The image is not dated, but WOSU was originally licensed as WEAO-AM in 1922, only changing the calls to WOSU in 1933. That gives us a big ten-year window and somwhere in that William Lucious Graves was on the radio.