[BC] What brought me into radio

[Ira Wilner]

Well, my dad was not into radio.  He was into oils on canvas when he had the
time which wasn't very often having spent most of his adult life in a lower
East Side sweatshop factory.  But one day, passing through radio row in
lower Manhattan, he stopped and bought me a birthday present.  It was a one
transistor radio kit.  CK722, 1N34 diode detector, air variable capacitor
and coil and a crystal headphone.  It cost him a fortune he did not have.  I
made a lot of experiments, mostly with antennas and actually got the thing
to work portably with a telescoping whip.  I was hooked!

In my teen years the late evening talk show hosts on NY radio, like Barry
Gray, Barry Farber, Gene Shepherd kept me spellbound about the medium.  In
college I got to meet Shep and also helped produce some weekend Barry Farber
shows one summer.    I met my future wife at the college radio station and
she joined me on our student adventures at WOR to help produce some women's
shows.  That was quite a summer!

--Ira