And now on to the final entry...
From Ledbetters, we moved to a house just off North Main Street on the Fairfield Pike, still in Edgemont - from there to second house on left on Fairoak, off Depot Street, later moving to the first house off Depot Street. Marsha started to school while living here. By this time, we had traded old "Lottie" in for a 1937 Chevy, "first class." Then we moved to Kingwood Avenue into Sam Warner's house, living here when Marsha had her tonsils removed by Dr. Carl Rogers, in the old hospital, now part of the First Christian Church. Marsha and Leslie played in the old shed behind the house. Ham Radio was good then and we worked the world.
We had two bad floods while here and we were forced to go around through the Narrow to reach the transmitter house. During one of these floods, the waters were so high that they were over the base of the tower. I had to wade in water up to my waist, out to the tower to disconnect the tower and connect my amateur radio antenna to stay on the air.
Norm Dye, Bill Johnson, Cleveland Ray, Dr. Roy Clark, Winston Roberts, I. D. Byers, Helen and some part timers worked for me. We had a console at the transmitter that allowed us to broadcast from there in the afternoons and from 8:00pm until sign-off at night. The engineers on duty did the station breaks, time and weather. I became a Communication Engineer for Motorola in 1947, servicing two-way systems, along with my WHAL engineering.
Highlights - 1946-1951
Did the first Walking Horse Broadcast. Set up most of the remotes in the early days, made the first voice transmission on the broadcast band while testing the night before we officially aired broadcast on 1400 KC.
First Amateur Radio to broadcast in Bedford County, W4IWV. Helen was first female amateur to broadcast in county, call W4WLH, and one of three women to work at broadcast transmitter in Tennessee at that time. Built first two-way system for Shelbyville Power System, built first two-way system for Duck River EMCV, maintained first Police System in Shelbyville and maintained first homer beacon at local airport, now Bomar Field.
We received FHA approval to build our house on Shelbyview Drive, on the south side in 1950. Only four or five houses on Shelbyview Drive then. Burham and Linda Drives were a cow pasture. Marsha and Leslie flew kites in that pasture. Leslie rabbit hunted there. It was a pasture all the way down to the WHAL transmitter. Moved into our house in the Fall of 1950.
Had an ice storm in the Spring of 1951. By June, we had settled into our new home on Shelbyview Drive.
This completes the 30 Years.
COMMENTS
By now, you are probably convinced that we experienced nothing but pain, hard times, depression, ward and rumors of wars, draft problems and job insecurity - well, yes and no.
From the end of World War I until 1945, was an unusual period in American History. A long festering depression, followed by global war that completely consumed the United States of America.
Like each generation from the beginning of man, we had our special problems, but with the bad times, we had our good and wonderfully exciting times. Throughout it all, we were able to stay together, many were not that fortunate.
Now looking back from a distance of forty years or more, those good times have improved with age and we savor their memory. Those bide times, well, their memory has dimmed greatly so that we can now say that the bad and good collectively, balance out and prompts us to say, as dad would have said, "Those were the good old days."
April 30, 1993
Timothy Richard Marsh
Assisted by
Helen Crawford Marsh
Shelbyville, Tennessee
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