WUMB - 25 Years of Memories

What is your favorite, most unforgettable or funniest memory of WUMB over the years? We'll post them here. Just send us an e-mail at wumb@umb.edu to include on the page. Please let us know if you would like your name and town included or if you would prefer to remain anonymous.

• I remember the time my (then) precocious ten-year-old son was helping to answer phones during a fundraiser, and instead of reading the actual copy on the bottom of the form after taking a pledge from a listener he said, "We'll send you a pledge form in the mail next week and you should send it back with your paycheck as soon as you can." - Pat Monteith (General Manager)
• I get into work very early every morning and look forward to turning on your station via the computer. 365 works very well as a format for tuning in trouble free. I live in Baltimore, MD and work in Northern Virginia (outside Washington DC). Despite living in this area, there is no local station that even comes close to your programming content except for a few very select shows. The nearest station is WXPN in Philadelphia. Keep up the good work. - Steve
• Dear WUMB. Happy 25th. My name is Eric Weinstein and I am Nuclear Safety Officer for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna Austria, the so-called nuclear watchdog. You may remember that our team here (of which I am quite proud to be a part) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. I listen to your radio station daily in the background over the web and I love it. I am a WUMB member and read with interest your recent magazine with an article about Grady Moates. This leads me to my email. I have a son, Nils, who is freshman at VCU in Richmond. Needless to say it is difficult for our family to be so far apart. Nils is interested in audio engineering and on February 3, I sent him to Boston to visit the NE Institute of Art with the idea of a possible transfer in mind. On a whim, earlier this year I contacted Grady by email and asked whether it was possible for Nils to visit or talk with him when in Boston. With no idea of who we were, he agreed. Nils just returned from his Boston trip with a glowing report, not so much about the school but about his meeting with Grady. I simply cannot tell you enough how this made our family feel. This is the spirit of what makes me love your music and other programs so well. Grady spoke to him about his own experiences and encouraged him to stay in school and still pursue his dreams, exactly what we have been saying, but sometimes its better from someone other than your parents. He even drove him around Boston and finally to the airport. It was a tremendous experience for an 18 year old without family nearby. Thanks for making your WUMB community part of ours. This small experience has renewed my faith in America and what's its all about - when facing so much criticism abroad. Thanks again and my best to Grady and your team.
  
  

  Former WUMB Program Assistant Ellen Guirleo (rear) with the Indigo Girls. A young Dick Pleasants (left) chats with Folk Odyssey's Dana Westover, who one of the first on-air announcers at WUMB

• My favorite WUMB event: "The Great Foliage Train Ride of 1994". . . Vance Gilbert and Peter Calo sang us all the way to the Hudson River, where we boarded a boat and went motoring up-river! A great time was had by all, and the pictures are STILL on the back door of the station. . . it's just that there's not a one of them with ME in it, and hardly anyone knows where those pix came from! I do. . . it was AWEsome! (Grady, the train lover)
• My favorite WUMB work memory: Building the WBPR, Worcester, transmitter site in the middle of February, in 18 inches of snow, a quarter-mile from the nearest road, on the back-side of a hill in Spencer! I was wearing the kind of hip-wader boots that are meant for fly-fishermen! There are pix of this one, somewhere, also. . . (Grady)
• I don't remember the exact month but I discovered WUMB shortly after you started. Your end of the dial had been my favorite for years. You, the world and I were much younger then. Goldie was even more youthful. Well done and many more! - Robert Flynn, Santo Domingo 88 degrees, 70% humidity (warm and dry)
• (I have more than one.... can I have more than one.... I've worked here a long time...) 1) Being pushed up into a drizzling rain to do a Over-The-Air phone-in, while on a boat in the middle of the Hudson River and thinking is there enough juice in the phone to electrocute me. 2) Showing up at a member concert in a kilt. It's a really long story, ask me in person sometime. 3) Dooming Christine Lavin into baking (and shipping!) dozens of loaves of Pain au Chocolat. Though I do feel a little guilty having watched her dig herself into the hole without stopping her. 4) Of the hundreds of interviews I've done here, the most memorable to me remains a conversation with the Australian Aboriginal Singer Archie Roach in 1992. 5) Watching Nanci Griffith sitting backstage watching Richard Thompson at the Boston Folk Festival. - Dave Palmater
  
  

  Dave Palmater (with microphone) has conducted most of our remote broadcast interviews. Celtic Twilight's Gail Gilmore smiles widely after interviewing Liam Clancy.

• WUMB went on the air less than 24 hours after I began my folk music program on WAMC in Albany, so we're in the same sphere. However, I have to mention that when my father was terminally ill, WUMB kept me sane when I was visiting him, travelling back and forth from Schenectady to Weymouth to visit him whenever I could. I would tune into WUMB as soon as I could get it on my car radio and hear the incredible music selections from Dick Pleasants and I felt like I was home. And I WAS home--home musically, home geographically, home on the airwaves. Knowing that I would be facing a father who was in excruciating pain once I got to the South Shore meant that I needed to find some strength to pull into the driveway, turn off the car and walk into the front door. I got that strength from the music played on WUMB. My father died in August 1987 after a three-year battle with prostate cancer. It was as if he were being tortured, wracked with pain. He loved the kind of music that WUMB plays as well, and he and I would listen to the radio if my mother wasn't home, sometimes even calling for his favorite songs. He loved Stan Rogers, particularly "The Mary Ellen Carter" (he had been a deep sea diver in the Navy and in the 1950s), and Schooner Fare. Then the next day, when I would get in my car and start the 200-mile journey home, WUMB would be there, an old friend, saying, "It's okay, you're doing the best that you can." I have always considered Dick Pleasants to be a mentor of sorts, since I listened to him when I lived in Boston for many years at WCAS, WGBH, and even when he was on WATD (I could only pick that station up when I was in Weymouth, and even then, just barely). He was not the first folk music D-J I ever heard on the air--Robert J. Lurtsema was--but he was the one from whom I learned the most, and continue to learn from to this day, even though I have done folk radio myself for 25 years in Albany and four years in Worcester. Despite the fact that I live in upstate New York, I still rely on WUMB when I go to Massachusetts, which is relatively often, since both of my adult children live there. As soon as I get in range, I tune in and make acquaintance with my old friend again, listening to the music that I love. I renew my membership every year because I believe in what you do. My other favorite memory was attending the SAMW music camp in 2003. It was nothing short of incredible, and I have been trying to make the time to get back again for another session. Maybe next year it will happen. In the meantime, happy anniversary to WUMB. Keep on keepin' on. - Wanda Fischer, Schenectady, NY
  
  

  Chief Engineer Grady Moates cleaning off the roof so the riggers could insall the WUMB-FM tower (most of our radio stations were built in the middle of winter). 8 year-old Barney Monteith interviews his guest Rachel Bello on Children's Radio Space.

• I have too many favorite memories associated with WUMB to hold just one close to my heart. It's the music, the announcers, the staff that I enjoy. I also am very blessed to have met so many great people that work and volunteer at the station. WUMB members are like a big family to me. Many of the staff and volunteers I have met working at the station over the years are some of my dearest friends. I am hoping we continue to grow as a station and grow together as friends. Happy 25th to us all! - Matt Mulvey, Proud WUMB Volunteer and Vice-Chair, WUMB Friends Council
• I distinctly remember what a haven the station was during the hours, days and weeks following the tragedy of 9/11/01. While it was certainly understandable that the media was totally absorbed with the story, we were constantly bombarded with audio and visual coverage that ranged from serious discourse to crass and sensational. There came a point, (sooner rather than later for some of us ) when we just needed a rest. We could not turn the clock back and there was certainly no denying that our lives would be forever changed but WUMB provided an alternative where sensitive people shared with us some of the best that people can create in a simple and unpretentious way. It was truly a kind of respite care for the soul. - anonymous
• My fondest memory is hearing myself, on the air , having an exchange with Johnathan Edwards that took place at a fondly remembered , long-ago (and obviously recorded) members concert. - J. P. FitzPatrick
• Arriving in Massachusetts back in 1987 it was astounding to this transplanted Buckeye to find WUMB playing folk music all day. Back in Toledo to find folk music I had to drive an hour north to Ann Arbor. Living in Massachusetts now- and then- all I need do is tune my radio to 91.9 and out comes John Gorka and Carrie Newcomer. My ears are smiling. WUMB actually makes traffic jams on 128 almost bearable. Almost. As Bill Morrissey says, the rush hour on Route 128 is still life with cars. The first pledge drive I heard I signed up and have been happily renewing each year. Out of all the fine musical experiences WUMB has given me, the one that comes to mind is having the Boston Folk Festivals stars happily sign an old acoustic guitar. They have signed a different guitar at the last three Boston Folk Festivals. The first guitar was an old one a friend of mine had given me. It looked good. It also had about a three mile action on the strings. It would be perfect for this little project. The Singer Songwriters signatures looked great on the front. The Worker Bees/ volunteers signed the back. That first year a young boy asked if he could sign it. I told him "No, that it was only for the volunteers and performers." He was crestfallen as he walked away. By the time I realized he should sign it, he was gone. So in the following years, if some one came up to me to see the guitar I explained it was to be signed by volunteers. "Oh, golly, I dropped my Sharpie. Could you pick it up please? Hey, that makes you a volunteer. Now YOU can sign it." They grinned, picked up the Sharpie and an added their John Hancock to the same guitar Chris Smither and Lori McKenna signed. That is what this whole folk music scene is about- community, friendship and great music. Long may the WUMB airwaves bring us fine folk tunes. Happy 25th Anniversary, WUMB. Tony Toledo, Beverly, MA
• Coming home on a Saturday afternoon, channel surfing on the radio. Tony Rice, Wayfaring Stranger. As a guitarist, I am stunned. Who is this? I must buy this. What radio station am I listening to? I get your call letters, find a phone number, get my question answered. Rush to Cambridge to Briggs & Briggs, buy the album. Hooked ever since! This was in your first year of broadcast. You have only gotten better, as has Mr. Rice! Thank you so much! Pat Crowley, Dedham, Ma.