Well, good morning, and you're listening of course to WMUU FM 94.5, and we are just about 59 years away from our initial broadcast that took place on this date, September 15th, 1949. WMUU signed on the air at 930 in the morning. We are at 937. of 59 years ago plus seven minutes. WMUU is broadcasting live for the very first time right here in Greenville. We're continuing that today and we can thank the Lord for giving us 59 years. We have with us today Dr. Gail Gingrey, retired member of the BJU music faculty. And Dr. Gingrey is not only here 59 years later, but he was there the very first day that WMUU had its broadcast. And of course, let's back up a little bit to Dr. Gingrey. But first of all, welcome to the mics today. Thank you. It's really a pleasure to be here. It's good to have you here. I want to give a little perspective to this because it was obviously before this that construction began on those studios. April the 7th, 1949 construction began on the WMU studios on the campus of BJU. What do you remember about that? You were a student at the time, I think a sophomore that year? Maybe it was a sophomore when they began the studio and we were all very excited about this because From what we could understand, it was going to be a very modern building, quite unlike most of the other buildings except it did have the yellow brick. So we thought, wow, this is going to be quite innovative and very exciting that we're going to go on the air. Because up to that time, we had been doing broadcasts on several local stations. I'd had the privilege of broadcasting even my very first semester on some station, I don't know what it was, on a Thursday night broadcast from the War Memorial Chapel. Is that right? So you were participating in the radio ministry even before the school had a station? Oh yes. We're looking at that time of construction. I don't know if you would have gone home that summer, but you may have gone home to your home state. No, I was traveling for the University's Summer Ensemble each summer. That summer of 1949. You came back and do you recall seeing a whole lot of progress because you probably missed a few months of construction? Oh I did and it seemed to me that it was coming along very beautifully. The outside of the building I think was pretty secure by that time and it was mostly the inside things that we didn't see that were going on at that time. So the construction now, what was your involvement with WMUU in those early days? I had the privilege of singing on the very first ever broadcast. I was a member of the university church choir, which meant that we sang only on every other Sunday morning. There were actually two of us church choirs, and we never sang for Vespers or any other programs. It was just Sunday morning worship service here on campus. We went to rehearsal on Monday evening, just before going on the air the next morning, and we were told by the Dean of the School of Fine Arts that we were going to be singing to bring the studio on air. And what were we going to be singing? A hymn that we had never heard before in that setting. It's O for a Thousand Tongues. Dr. Jones had been over in England and he came back with his music and the dean informed us that we were going to be singing four stanzas by memory the next morning. That meant we had to learn in that evening the four stanzas in parts, soprano, alto, tenor and bass, and all of those stanzas by memory. Couldn't hold your music in front of you. Oh no, we couldn't have music. In those days everything was done by memory. Maybe we can hear a little bit more about this because what we want to do in a little bit later on the broadcast, this morning around 10, we would like to air an excerpt from that dedicatory broadcast of WMUU first going on the air. And I believe that we do have, I'm getting the nod from our production director, we do have that song in there. And I think we'll have you explain a little bit more about that. If you don't mind, we'll come back to that at about 10 o'clock. But beyond that first broadcast, Were you involved in some more radio choirs that sang in the radio station? Actually, since I was in church choir I couldn't be in radio choir, but a radio choir was formed and they began doing a program called Hymn History. And the first director was with the university, I think, only three years. I wasn't actually involved in that choir, in history choir, until I came back from the army. And after I'd been back one full year from the army, I was called in and told I was going to be the director for that program, the music director. And that, for me, was a very exciting thing because I'd loved radio since I was a young singer and I would go to Chicago and go down to WMBI and watch them do broadcasts live. And that for me was very exciting. Because where I'm from in Illinois, we had one station from Peoria and then the other stations we listened to were all from Chicago, which was 120 miles from my home in Tiskilwa, Illinois. I'm not going to ask you to spell that, Tom. That's Tis-Kil-Wa. T-I-S-K-I-L-W-A. A Potawatomi Indian name for gem of the valley. Wow. We used to say, well, there were two Indian braves, Tis and Wa, and they were in love with the same Indian maiden, and Tis killed Wa. That was just a story. But I had the privilege of working on WMUU the summer of 1951 and 1952 as well. I loved working in the station. I played organ a bit and so I became the organist for all the live broadcasts. and we did a daily serial and Mr. Pratt did a daily program of very interesting stories, 10 minute program. Mr. Pratt of course was our first manager. First manager of the station. Well this was after he was no longer the manager, but he came and did a lot of programs anyway. I had the privilege of playing for him and And for Mr. Ryerson, who became the manager of the station, when he did a daily program of hymns, he would sing three or four hymns on each program. And I also played for a program called Be the day weary, be the day long, at length it cometh to evensong. That was the name of the program, Evensong, by Miss Velma Eubanks. Our chief announcer, I believe. And I would play little interludes on the organ. And that was really a great opportunity for me. I loved it. We want to hear some more from Dr. Gail Gingrey who was here on the very first day that WMUU ever broadcast on this date in history, September 15, 1949. And thank you for joining us. We are continuing to talk about our original broadcast here on WMUU some 59 years ago today. This is our station anniversary. I'm Jeff Gayness and with me in our studio is Dr. Gail Gingrey, retired member of the BJU music faculty. Dr. Gail Gingrey was there for that first broadcast some 59 years ago today. Well, it was 59 years ago today on September the 15th. And we're going to play an excerpt from that broadcast that was recorded for us for posterity. And we do want to give you a little bit of a, I don't know if we call it a disclaimer, Dr. Genry, but the recording methods that we have today are, of course, superior than what they had in 1949. So the quality of this recording doesn't reflect the actual quality of what was heard on that day by the human ear. I'm sure that was a lot better than what we're going to play, but we do have a recording that's an example of what was heard at that time in 1949. Dr. Gainor, if you could just introduce this selection that we're going to hear shortly after this broadcast begins. We were members of the choir that sang in church on Sunday mornings. We went for our rehearsal on Monday evening, and the Dean of the School of Fine Arts said, we're singing tomorrow for the initial broadcast of WMUU. We said, we are? And that made us all quite alert, and frankly, very jittery. And he said, yes, we're going to be singing an arrangement of O for a Thousand Tongues that Dr. Jones just brought back from England. Oh, and you have probably heard it many times because it is a well-known setting of the hymn now, but then we had never heard it before. Well, the choir rehearsed the first stanza, then I was told that Joan Hamm, a soprano, a graduate student, and I were to do the second stanza as a duet, and then I was to do the third stanza as a solo, which meant that I had to memorize the tenor part to do the duet with Joan, and then the soprano part for which I was to do the solo. That is the one night in my entire college experience in which I slept very, very badly that night because we were going on the air the next day and I was scared to death about that. And then to have to do all of this by memory, two different parts of a hymn that we really never thought about memorizing before. And it was unfamiliar too. This was new at this time. It was entirely new to us. Yes, we had just never even heard it before. got up to do it and they actually have a recording to play for you right now so you can hear pretty much I think the way we sounded although It was live in Rodeheaver Auditorium, which seats 3,000 people, and we were standing on the stage at WMU, excuse me, in Rodeheaver and broadcasting, not knowing we were even being recorded. But it was a very exciting time anyway to be in front of the entire student body and all the faculty assembled there in that great gathering. So let's give ear to that. Dr. Gingrey has given us the background of this broadcast. Here is that initial broadcast of WMUU, September 15th, 1949. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Our Heavenly Father, we pray that Thy Holy Spirit will fill these airwaves today. May every word and every note of music broadcast on this station today be to Thy glory. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. For the first special number on this dedicatory program for WMUU, Bob Jones University Choir is singing a special arrangement of a very familial hymn, All for a Thousand Tongues to Sing. Bob Jones University is grateful for WMUU, which gives us a voice and a tongue on the wings of the wind where we can put out the praise of the Lord and where we can put out the message of the university. So it seems to me this is a particularly appropriate hymn for the choir to sing as the first special number on our new station. The triumph of His grace. The triumph of His grace. The triumph of His grace. The triumph of His grace. The triumph of His grace. The triumph of His grace. The triumph of His grace. The honor of thy name. The honor of thy name. That is our sovereignty. That is our sovereignty. His life and health and peace. His life and health and peace. His life and health and peace. His life and health and peace. He takes the power of Catholic faith. He sets the prisoners free. He sets the prisoners free. He sets the prisoners free. At this time we want to present to you the members of the staff We want our radio listeners to get acquainted with these folks whom you'll be hearing day after day, people who carry the burden and the responsibility of the programs and shows on WNUU. So I'm going to ask them now to come to the microphone, say just a word to you. Our station manager, whose dreamful friends know because you've heard him on the broadcast on the other stations for the last two years, Mr. Robert Pratt, station manager of WNUU. Colossians 118, that in all things he might have the preeminent I have, and all of the WMUU radio staff, have endeavored to have this as our guiding principle in our programming in every situation that has arisen in the preparation for WMUU. We've tried to design our program so that you, the listener, may tune in at any time and receive a wholesome Christian program. Now our program director, Miss Julia Boyardee. I'd like to read to you from Psalm 3119. Oh, how great is thy goodness! which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men. I pray that in all of our operation there, and in all of our work, He might have the command. And now the young lady who's the traffic manager, Miss Barbara Jones, who comes to us from New England with us. Philippians 4, 13. I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. I'm thankful today that I don't have to depend on my own strength, for without Christ I could do nothing. And I thank him for the opportunity of coming back to Bob Jones University and serving him through working on WMUU. Now the music librarian, Mrs. Grace McMullen. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. I'm certainly grateful to the Lord for the opportunity of working for him here. And I like to think of WMUU as an instrument of praise for him. So my prayer is that all our programs may be a blessing to the people who hear. And that's what we're working for, and we hope it will really turn out to be a blessing for all of you. Now I'm going to present the three young men who are full-time announcers on WMUU. The first young man is Mr. Peter Rupp. I'm now in service of the Lord Jesus Christ at Bob Jones University. I've been a child of God six months. I was taken out of a job as a commercial radio actor and commercial announcer to serve the Lord here. I thank God from the bottom of my heart that I am here today. Now, Mr. Tommy Moe, I can't express what it means to me to be connected with this Christian radio staff. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Lord for his blessings to me and to pledge my best along with the rest of the radio staff to make the programs which go over this station the best. Programs which will be a Christian testimony and ones which Christians will want to hear. Now a young man and an announcer on WMUU, Mr. Don Baker. I'm certainly grateful this morning for this opportunity I have of helping you get out the gospel, and I hope that your prayers will be behind us, that many might be saved as they hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed over the air. I'm thankful this morning for the unsearchable riches of Christ, and also that I can know in whom I have believed, and can be persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. Now, two young men, one of them you will hear from time to time because he's going to do some announcing, but his job is really the job of Chief Technician with our station, Mr. Hardy Hayes. Hardy, will you come to the mic, say a word to our friends? Psalm 1914. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. I thank the Lord this morning for this opportunity of testimony. on WMUU, and I thank the Lord for the testimony of Bob Jones University. And I would like to encourage you students, and you who are listening in your homes this morning who are on praying ground, to uphold us in prayer. Every time you hear us come on the air, every minute you're on your knees in prayer, remember this station, remember this university, that we may honor the Lord with our programs as we propagate the gospel here at Bob Jones University. I know this next young man would feel more at home up on the mountain if the controls up there. He's our chief engineer, Mr. Don Smith, chief engineer. I'm thankful for the opportunity of serving the Lord on the staff of WMUU, Bob Jones University. I take courage in the verse that Miss Jones has already quoted, Philippians 14, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. No one who has not been on hand could appreciate the contribution which these young people have made in trying to meet the deadline for the opening of the station. They've worked like trojans day and night. We appreciate the way in which they've gotten under this load to put this station on the air on schedule. Instead of going on to operate part-time as new students usually do, we're coming on with a full schedule of operations. Now before I present our next special musical number, I'd like to tell our friends just a word about what our plans are on WMUU. WMUU is a regular commercial station. It's a Christian station. That doesn't mean all our programs will be sacred programs. We believe in a well-rounded life. We're going to have up-to-the-moment newscasts. We're going to have some very fine dramatic shows, both secular shows and sacred shows. But they'll be of high type quality, fine and decent and clean and moral. We'll have nice musical programs, some fine transcribed programs, some live talent musical programs. And we'll have also from time to time, particularly on our Sunday broadcast, some outstanding religious broadcasts of national interest. We have some very interesting children's shows programmed for the children and the youngsters, which they'll greatly enjoy. Now at this time, the University Male Quartet will sing the Lord Jehovah Reign. At this time, I present Mrs. Ebony Chase, who sang the solo, When God is Near. When God is near, with light my path is glowing. The path of life, with gladness overthrown, and in the garden of my heart is growing. Now, I want to visit with our friends who are listening in, as well as the students for just a minute. And then I have a little message I want to bring you. When we get to the last stanza, instead of saying, when we've been back 10,000 years, instead of saying 10,000, we're going to say 10 trillion. By the way, 10 trillion is what we're going to do. my shining hands upon, with all that day to speak of faith, and when we first begun. And that was an excerpt of the original broadcast, the dedicatory broadcast of WMUU, originally broadcast September 15, 1949, the very first broadcast of our radio station. We have with us in the studios once again Dr. Gail Gingrey, a retired member of the BJU music faculty, and we're going to get to a break here in just a moment, but we do want to take just a brief time to give you just a little history of that. And so, Dr. Gingrey, we heard the soloist there at the end, and you were commenting as we were off the air, but if you could just give a little perspective to that voice we heard just a moment ago. Eva Mae Foltz Chase had one of the most glorious voices we've ever had at Bob Jones University. A real mezzo-soprano. She came from Ohio and I remember her telling me about her father's being saved at the closing meeting of Bible Conference. It was about 1950 or so. And Eva Mae and her husband went to a church ministry. upon graduation after their master's degrees, and Eva Mae developed cancer of the throat and so was unable to sing the last year of her life or so. But what a glorious voice she had and how everybody looked forward to hearing her whenever she was soloist. That was a great song. Was the title of that song, When God is Near? When God is Near. Wonderful song there that we had. And welcome back to our broadcast this morning. We are of course in that anniversary year, 59th anniversary of WMUU is today, September the 15th. And this will be our closing section talking with Dr. Gail Gingrey, a retired member of the BJU music faculty. And Dr. Gingrey, there were some opportunities to provide live music and of course that broadcast we heard a moment ago was an example of a live broadcast of Christian music going out over the air. Do you recall any other circumstances, choirs that you were involved with where you were singing for radio programs? Dr. Bob Senior was on the program every morning at 8 o'clock and he would bring a short message and then there was a quartet that sang. If he were in town he would speak longer and he was gone by recording so the quartet would have to sing three or four hymns and gospel songs and I had the privilege of doing that one summer especially Mrs. Jack Butram and I were live on the broadcast every morning of the week. Miss Eva Carrier did a children's program on Saturdays and she would go over about six o'clock in the morning and write the program Then we'd get together and do a recording on which I was the organist. I even read some lines from the stories that she had written. There were about five or six of us would get there on a Saturday morning to do the recording. So I had a lot of different opportunities. It was interesting to hear somebody like Mr. Bob Pratt, who was an absolute elegant speaker. He was born on the North Carolina line of the South Carolina-North Carolina border. But he had managed, through very diligent work, to do away with most of his Southern dialect. And he had taken a master's degree up at Northwestern University in Illinois. So he was really excellent. We were doing a broadcast one morning and we were recording and in the middle of the recording he was reading from the script and he suddenly stopped and he said, it's it's not fair it's just not fair to require a native southerner to say those sounds together and i can't remember what those two words were but we all just caught our breath because that was the middle of our broadcast well we just started the broadcast over and and we did it and he got it absolutely perfect you would never know that he had any difficulty with the sounds but i thought you know it's a miracle that more of those things don't happen when you do programs live or you're doing for recording and they're going to be preserved for antiquity. and you have no option to really correct things on the air, you have to go back and do them again. But that was one outstanding example that I remember from many years ago. That's a good one. And Robert Pratt, of course, was involved in so many of the productions on campus where you're not only involved with the radio station, with the first manager, but was a Shakespearean actor, a great speech teacher, and all of that. So it was interesting to hear you say that it was unfair to have a Southerner have to say those things. Well, that was one of those things. We all laughed about that because if anybody did not have a Southerner, I said it was certainly Bob Bratt. You wouldn't have known that he was from the South. He didn't know where he was from, but he certainly wasn't from the South. Well, if you know why a Southerner sounds South, then you could understand how he could do both. Because I've been here in the South now 61 years, and I can tell you, how you do a southern accent, at least to some extent. It's really just a matter of what you've grown up with. You would diphthong your vowel sounds. Instead of your vowel sounds, your vowel sounds. Well, when Dr. Pratt went back home to North Carolina, he talked with the same diphthonging that he had done before. Right. He could get right back into his earlier accent. He was so excellent in Shakespeare and all other things that I ever heard him read. He was an amazing man. But those early days, so you heard, of course, your association with Dr. Bob Jones Sr., that radio program. Any favorite memories as we, I have just a couple of more minutes to discuss this, but any favorite memory of the early days that you recall? You had some great opportunities there with the music, with some of the programming. You're rubbing shoulders even with Dr. Bob Senior, the founder of the station. Well, when we were doing Vespers in those days every Sunday and certain selections done on the Vespers would go, the people would go over to WMUU, which was right across the street from Rodeheaver in those days, and would do those numbers live for a broadcast from WMUU. And I thought that was a wonderful opportunity. And it was It's just really a great opportunity to get the gospel out and to get different sacred numbers that most of the listeners would never have heard before, but they would hear them from our Vesper program done live within the hour after the program had been done on Vespers to do it. We were only doing one performance of Vespers in those days. So we do the Vesper program and then we go over to WMU and do it live. It's a great opportunity, yes. Well thank you for giving us really some early memories there that you had of WMUU. We think back, it's been 59 years, and one of the verses I heard that Mr. Pratt read was the verse from Colossians 118, that in all things he might have the preeminence. And that was a great guiding principle in the early days of WMUU. As a Christian station, even today we're trying to make a spiritual impact on the community, not only through Christian music, but through Christian programs. You're part of the heritage that we have. We're standing on your shoulders and the shoulders of many other people as we look forward to the ministry of WMUU. It's been a great opportunity of service for the Lord. I always look forward to going up to WMUU, I'd be called out of my teaching to come up and record a number for a program. I never knew all the solos that I had sung on WMUU live, because I'd just come up and sing so-and-so. And I'd get there, and the pianist and I very often didn't even have an opportunity to rehearse. We would just do the numbers, and then I'd go back down and finish my teaching. And it was just an incredible opportunity. I had fallen in love with doing radio when I was a young teenager. And then to come to WMUU years later and have an opportunity was a wonderful thing. Well, thank you very much for being here with us today. And it's just really good to hear from someone who was there. And I wish I could have been there to see it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the time the Lord wanted me to be here. But it is neat to see it through your eyes and to hear it through your voice, what we have. And the 59 years to God be the glory. Thank you very much, Dr. Gingrey. Amen. We appreciate that.