The Sixties

Don Kirkpatrick arrived at Kagnew Station in March 1960, from AFRTS headquarters in Los Angeles. In addition to the OIC Bue mentioned above, Don lists the NCOIC as Sergeant Joseph Lyden and other staff announcers, in addition to Altman, were Pete Buckalew, Wesley Cain, Rob Webb and Gary Perkins. Jimmy __??__ was a TV director who had worked at ABC-TV prior to Army service. When Don arrived in March 1960, "temporary studios were in the Signal Building, more or less in the center of Kagnew Station. The post's telephone exchange, photographic unit and signal operations were in the same building." (I don't know if Don is referring to the TV studios but I assume so based upon the "Kagnew Gazelle" (above) that states the temporary radio studios were located in the service club's game room. - Clarification sought.)

The move to temporary quarters for renovation of the original TV studios must have been accompanied by a more free-form administration as Don notes, "When I arrived, neither the radio station nor the TV station used a program log - and not even a shift schedule for announcers on radio. Whenever a kinescope shipment arrived, the engineers would just air whatever they felt like watching, whenever they felt like watching it. I devised a regular program schedule for the TV station." I have radio program schedules that were published in the "Gazelle" as early as 1953, and during the 1957-1958 era I know first hand that there was formal scheduling of all radio and TV programs, as well as staff shifts. Don indicates that radio was then on a 24-hour schedule. This is a change from the earlier periods with which I am familiar. (When did radio programming expand to 24-hours?)

Don also informs that, "One of the engineers at the radio-TV station, Joe Donat, was sent to Viet Nam after my departure from Kagnew Station for Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX where I still live. Sergeant Donat was assigned to the AFRS station in Hue and was captured during the Tet Offensive. He spent five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. I later learned that his cellmate during that time was John Anderson, who, as a sergeant in the Information Office at Fort Bliss, worked for me on week-ends at KROD Radio in El Paso before he, too, was sent to Viet Nam. That is my 'small world' story."

We're promised photos from David Stanley (63-65). David has also plans to track down the historic files that were moved from the Pomponio Building in Arlington. He had not remembered seeing the designation that KANU was the Army's first TV station when he was stationed in the archives area in Arlington. I've since provided him my attribution and I'm anxious for his follow-up as I want this compilation to be totally accurate and acceptable to the Armed Forces Information Service, the parent of Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.

Ralph Reinhold was stationed at Kagnew Station from April 1961 to October 1962 and reports that the original Dage TV cameras were still functioning this whole time and that the station was still on Channel 8. Ralph is "pretty sure" that a Dage telecine and sync generator were part of the equipment but thinks the switcher was Roper. He remembers the switcher was mechanical as, "they usually switched by wiping". He also remembers that the AM transmitter was located, "just west of the miniature golf course and south of the Oasis Club".

Ralph notes that by 1961 AFRTS had reduced the diameter of the music transcriptions reduced to 12" from 16". But the 16" Gates consoles and turntables where in each of the radio studios. "The TV control room had somebody or another's lathe", he said. Al Mix and Frank Wukovits (sp?) are other staff members he recalls from that era.

Tom Curran was at KS from June 1964 to October 1966 and worked with the KANU staff and was Editor of the "Kagnew Gazelle" and the "KANU TV GUIDE".

The founder of the Kagnew Station website, John Harris, was at KANU in the 1965-1967 era. He notes that, after working late night shifts, "it was really wonderful trying to sleep in the HQS building with house boys jamming their floor buffers into my bunk. He submitted some photos, including one from ABC - New York, where he worked from 1975 to 1990 before an early retirement and a move back to California.

The call letters, KANU, were changed again sometime in this era (when?) as Larry Limbach ('67'69) writes, "When I was on the Radio and T-V at Kagnew, it was known as AFRS Radio and AFRS T-V … we never used KANU". (Somewhere I have read that change was necessitated by someone's associating K - A - N - U as the acronym of some African political organization?). I'm looking forward to Larry's further contributions.

David Hesselbrock did a country music show in 1969 and 1970. David writes that, "I have a very distinct Texas Drawl and they thought I would be a natural. I was assigned to the post signal group and did the radio show after normal duty hours. It was fun. I have some reel to reel tapes somewhere, but I have no way to play them. (I have written David that I have reel to reel equipment and will be happy to transfer them. This goes for anyone else reading this who has tapes they can't play - send them to me, I'll copy and return with the original together with a copy you can play, either cassette or CD.) Staff members that David recalls are: Doug Poor (real name); Don "Ryan" Brown, George Allen (sports), Terry Kirkpatrick and engineer Bob Blatnic.