WRVA: The Voice of Virginia

For generations of Virginians, Richmond’s WRVA AM radio station was a daily staple for news, public affairs, and entertainment. For those of a certain age who grew up in the Richmond metro area in the 1970s through the 1990s, our fondest recollection of WRVA was listening to Alden Aaroe, and later Tim Timberlake, early in the morning over breakfast, breathlessly awaiting the hoped-for school closing list because of snow that had fallen overnight.

Established in 1925, WRVA was one of the earliest radio stations in Virginia and its 50,000-watt antennae gave it enough range to stretch across the state and country. Documenting the station’s history and importance to the city, region, and state for much of the twentieth century, the WRVA Radio Collection at the Library of Virginia spans 75 years (1925–2000) and includes sound recordings, programming guides, photographs, interviews, newsletters, listener surveys, sales promotions, anniversary booklets, ratings data, and ownership, financial, and FCC records.

Transmitting only the letter “S” in Morse code on December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi harnessed radio waves to send the first transatlantic wireless transmission from Great Britain to Newfoundland, Canada. He developed a network of wireless stations, commonly called American Marconi, and owned by British Marconi. In 1906, Reginald A. Fessenden, who invented the continuous-wave transmitter, broadcast violin music and holiday greetings to ships at sea on Christmas Eve. That same year Lee de Forest patented the first radio tube, which reproduced sound with clearer fidelity. In 1913, Edwin Howard Armstrong invented the regenerative or feedback circuit that fed a radio signal through the radio tube 20,000 times per second, increasing its power and allowing for a more powerful broadcast signal. When World War I erupted in Europe, the United States Navy took control of all radio installations, including those of American Marconi. To prevent foreign interests from controlling America’s communications after the war ended, General Electric purchased American Marconi and forced it to transfer the company’s operation to the new Radio Corporation of America.

Although amateurs throughout the nation experimented with sending out signals of people speaking or playing phonograph music and instruments, the broadcasting revolution really began November 2, 1920, when Pittsburgh’s KDKA aired results of that year’s presidential election. By the end of 1922, more than 500 radio stations had been established throughout the United States. Within two years, the number had increased to 1,400, as a variety of businesses and organizations such as universities, department stores, newspapers, and banks operated their own broadcasting stations. With more than 400,000 households owning radios by 1923, the medium had become a national phenomenon. Within a decade, more than one million listeners tuned in.

At 9 p.m. on November 2, 1925, WRVA broadcast for the first time. Owned by tobacco manufacturers Larus & Brother Company, the station initially operated as a community service without commercial revenue and broadcast only two evenings a week. The third commercial radio station in Virginia, WRVA quickly became the largest. The 1,000-watt transmitter Larus & Brother purchased from Western Electric Company was only the fourth such transmitter installed in the United States. WRVA became the most powerful radio station operating between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. The Richmond News Leader and other newspapers heralded the station’s arrival, while advertisements for radios filled its pages. The day after the first broadcast, the newspaper proclaimed that “Practically every section east of the Mississippi River reported hearing the Richmond station, the greatest distances having been Arkansas, Chicago, and Nova Scotia.”

By 1929, WRVA was broadcasting seven days a week. That same year the station became affiliated with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), an association that lasted until 1937, when WRVA joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). In May 1933, WRVA opened new broadcasting studios in the Hotel Richmond, at 9th and Grace Streets. The new space included four broadcasting studios, an announcer’s booth, a control room, and office space. Two years later, WRVA built a new 5,000-watt transmitter in Mechanicsville. The tower was the first all-wood self-supporting radio tower in North America. With a celebration that included congratulations from CBS, Virginia governor James H. Price and Senator Harry F. Byrd, the station built a 50,000-watt transmitter in eastern Henrico County in 1939 that dwarfed the power of other radio stations in Virginia and allowed WRVA to increase the number of listeners, reaching audiences as far away as the west coast and Canada. In 1961, the station installed a new 50,000-watt transmitter for WRVA-AM and a 200,000-watt transmitter for WRVA-FM. In 1968, WRVA moved to a new studio designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson. Overlooking downtown Richmond, the new location on Church Hill was symbolical of WRVA’s status as the Voice of Virginia. The Church Hill studio remained the home of WRVA until 2000, when the station moved to the West End of Richmond.

With a variety of programming that included comedy, drama, music, sports, news, religious services, and public affairs, radio stations offered something for everyone. Early in the 1920s, Richmond’s WQAT broadcast music from phonograph records as well as the World Series. WTAR in Norfolk broadcast a two-hour concert and religious services in 1923 and the Democratic National Convention in 1924. Roanoke’s WDBJ aired old-time banjo and fiddle music during this period. Network affiliations with NBC, CBS, and ABC provided local stations with the ability to broadcast national events and programs as well as to receive money from national sponsors. Network radio brought events happening thousands of miles away into the living rooms of almost every American and helped unite a nation. During radio’s golden years of the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of television, listeners could enjoy situation comedies (Easy Aces and The Goldbergs), dramas (The Lone Ranger and The Shadow), adventures (Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy), and soap operas (The Hilltop House and The Second Mrs. Burton). Radio also offered comedy variety shows such as The Rudy Vallee Show, The Fred Allen Show, and The Charlie McCarthy Show with ventriloquist Edward Bergen and his sidekick Charlie McCarthy. Matching the faster pace of 1940s Virginia, WRVA ventured beyond the studio for remote broadcasts that brought the station even closer to its audience.

National network radio kept Americans informed, entertained, and diverted from the hardships of the Great Depression and conflicts around the globe. As the world became enveloped in the Second World War, broadcast journalism emerged. People tuned in to Arthur Godfrey and Edward R. Murrow to hear the latest news, while radio brought into American living rooms Adolf Hitler’s speeches, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and news of the D-Day invasion. With the arrival of television late in the 1940s, people no longer listened to their favorite shows; they watched them. But radio remained popular for music, news, and sports, especially in areas where television reception was difficult and as portable and car radios became available. As Americans hit the road in the 1950s, they took their radios with them.

In addition to national programming, WRVA broadcast extraordinary musical shows featuring local performers. By the 1930s, WRVA’s main “traditional” music show was the Corn Cob Pipe Club. Based in fictional “Virginia Cross Roads,” the show incorporated an orchestrated patter of jokes and musical performances. The Corn Cob Pipe Club boasted more than 272,000 members nationwide by 1934 with chapters in all 48 states.

The Old Dominion Barn Dance began in 1946 with Mary Higdon “Sunshine Sue” Workman and her husband, John Workman, as hosts. The show ran until 1957 and made Sunshine Sue a star, earning her the nickname “Queen of the Hillbillies.” Broadcast from Richmond’s Lyric Theater, it featured such performers as Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters, Grandpa Jones, The Saddle Sweethearts, the Tobacco Tags, Chet Atkins, and Earl Scruggs.

Every third Saturday of the month, it was broadcast coast-to-coast on the national CBS network. The Sunshine Hour, begun in the 1930s, was also widely popular. Holland R. Wilkinson, known as the singing evangelist, hosted the program, which featured hymnals and gospel music. The Silver Star Quartet began singing religious spirituals on WRVA Radio in 1939 and continued entertaining listeners into the 1990s. The Virginia Fiddlers and Joe Matthews’ Sabbath Glee Club were very popular local performers on WRVA in its early days.

Throughout WRVA’s broadcast history, there was considerable emphasis on the state’s regional culture, on sporting events, and on special local programming. Special-interest programs included Virginia congressman Vaughan Gary reporting on events in the nation’s capital in the 1950s and public relations manager Walter R. Bishop hosting Bishop’s Cracker Barrel devoted to stories about Virginia’s politicians. The Radio Scholarship Quiz offered a competition between area high school seniors, while the Quiz of Two Cities pitted Richmond against Norfolk in a popular quiz show. WRVA experimented with a cooking show in 1934 when it promised advertisers that, for $100, Miss Belle T. Abrams would mention their products on her ten-show cooking school. The station later launched Calling All Cooks, which offered advice on cooking and demonstrated the latest in culinary appliances and products. Radio even offered live theater including WRVA’s reenactment of Patrick Henry’s 1775 “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, with Douglas Southall Freeman as the famous orator.

For 37 years, Alden Aaroe’s morning show was the centerpiece of WRVA’s programming, and trade magazines ranked him as one of the most popular announcers in the country. Beginning in 1956, Aaroe’s informal, conversational style attracted a large audience, and the show became one of the longest-running radio programs of its kind. Because of WRVA’s powerful signal, Aaroe’s program gained a loyal following throughout much of central and eastern Virginia and in parts of North Carolina and West Virginia. He helped establish the station’s Shoe Fund for the Salvation Army, which by 1993 had raised more than $3.5 million to provide shoes for needy children. While Aaroe ruled the morning drive time, Big John Trimble carried the station’s overnight broadcast for almost two decades beginning in the 1970s.

Broadcasting from a truck stop along Interstate 95 north of Richmond, Trimble entertained long haul truckers across the country. Two of the more unusual personalities on WRVA were Millard the Mallard and the Capitol Squirrel. Millard joined Aaroe’s morning show in 1972, becoming a station mascot until the character was retired in 2000. The Capitol Squirrel reported on events in the area and editorialized on local matters such as the General Assembly, litter in the city, bus drivers, drunk driving, and parking in downtown Richmond.

The sound recordings in the WRVA collection date from the 1930’s to the 1990’s and contain broadcasts of significant local, state, national, and world events; human interest stories; and unique programs of local and regional interest. During World War II a number of radio programs, such as Let’s Go to Town from September 1944, were aimed at servicemen and featured news from Richmond during the year, musical performances from local nightclubs, movie reviews, and services available to returning soldiers. Weekly musical and variety programs such as the Happy Valley Girls, Silver Star Quartet, and Sunshine Sue, as well as public service announcements, such as the Virginia State Highway Advisory Committee on carpooling to help save gas during World War II and from Virginia Electric and Power Company on conserving energy during the war, kept radio listeners entertained and informed in the era before television.

In the 1950s Alden Aaroe sent in vacation stories from Colorado and Hawaii, while the 1970s and 1980s saw a concern for area youth with multi-part documentaries on teen pregnancy and drug use in local schools. There are recordings detailing the station’s history and milestones, including this notable broadcast on WRVA’s 65th anniversary in 1990. Local and state news were a core part of WRVA’s programming, with reports that included Governor Thomas B. Stanley addressing the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Governor J. Lindsay Almond‘s response in 1959 to court rulings that the Massive Resistance laws were unconstitutional, or the General Assembly’s 1956 public hearings on school legislation. These hearings included comments by former governor Colgate Whitehead Darden supporting local municipal option in deciding how to desegregate (or not desegregate) local schools; by W. Lester Banks, president of the Virginia NAACP, calling for integration at all deliberate speed; and Adèle Clark, a founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, urging compliance with the Supreme Court decision.

In an era before 24-hour cable news (and way before our modern smartphone technology), WRVA was an important source for news coverage, such as natural and man-made disasters like the Pocahontas Fuel Company mine explosion in 1958, Hurricane Camille flood damage in 1969, or a docuseries on the Kepone contamination of the James River in the mid-1970s. Local and state news populated the station’s airwaves, including reports on meetings at Richmond City Hall and Douglas Freeman High School related to the 1961 proposed merger of the city of Richmond and Henrico County, and the dedication of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in 1964. News reports of distinguished visitors to Virginia always made the programming rundown at WRVA, including the visit of a young Queen Elizabeth II to Virginia during the commonwealth’s 350th anniversary celebration of the founding of Jamestown, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign stop in Richmond in September 1952. John F. Kennedy’s early November 1960 campaign stop in Norfolk made the station’s airwaves, as well as a tribute to the fallen president after his assassination three years later. Unique human interest stories were wildly popular on WRVA, such as September 1939’s “Let’s Visit A Train Dispatcher” piece, and a 1975 interview with Titanic survivor Albert Caldwell. Beyond simply reporting the news, coverage of local sporting events served to promote the Richmond area, as in the case of the Richmond Newspapers Marathon in October 1988 or the autumn NASCAR race week in September 1994.

All of the sound recordings in the WRVA collection are available on compact disk for use at the Library. They are gradually being made available online through the Library’s catalog.