“Radio Days” 

“Live from Oak Park”, or words to that effect, rang out from high atop the new Oak Park Arms Hotel for the first time on Saturday evening, February 9, 1924 as station WTAY went on the air at a time when commercial “wireless” radio broadcasting was sweeping the nation. Chicago’s first station, KYW, went on the air in November 1921 from the Drake Hotel. Within months Chicagoans had bought over 20,000 receiving sets. Oak Park’s WTAY was the first station to be based in the suburbs and boasted a signal that, according to its owner, the Oak Leaves, could be heard “a thousand miles distant.”

The station’s inaugural broadcast was preceded by a gala dinner in the Oak Park Arms ballroom that headlined Chicago radio celebrities from KYW and the Edgewater Beach Hotel’s WBEH. The public was invited, as the Oak Leaves put it, to “meet radio notables in the flesh.” In addition to live band music, local singers and musicians were encouraged to audition for a chance at on-air performances—an early local version of “American Idol”.

For all its initial promise WTAY soon outgrew its local roots. In 1925 it was purchased by the Coyne Electrical Institute, renamed WGES, an acronym for Coyne’s motto: “the world’s greatest electrical school,” and moved to Chicago.

Radio broadcasting returned to Oak Park and the Oak Park Arms Hotel in October 1950 with the launch of Village Broadcasting’s WOPA on both the AM and FM bands. For almost 30 years WOPA offered daytime popular music and nighttime jazz and rhythm and blues music. By the early 1970s the FM side, 102.7, evolved into Chicago’s WBMX, “the black music experience,” which became WVAZ in 1988. In 1987 ownership of the AM band (1490) was transferred to the Polish National Alliance and the call letters changed to WPNA. This Polish news and cultural station, along with WVAZ, continue to broadcast from the Oak Park Arms studio.

By Robert Messer 

 For more information see: Oak Leaves, Feb. 2, 1924; and Chicago Radio Timeline, http://67.162.73.47/public/zecom/museum/Chiradhist/westsuburban.htm 

 
Santa hears child's wishes in Oak Park circa 1900
Santa Comes to Town

Of the many time-honored holiday rituals the arrival of Santa Claus is among the most indispensable. The traditional Santa’s visit is on the night before Christmas. 

But modern merchandizing has continually pushed back the first appearance of the jolly old elf into autumn.  The advent of downtown North Poles and department store toy lands coincided with the age of mass marketing in the 1920s. 

In the lean years of the Great Depression, when consumer discretionary spending was particularly difficult to stimulate, local merchants were forced to come up with inventive ways to get Santa, and shoppers, to the village stores. 

In mid-December 1933 the Southern District Business Association in Oak Park out did its rivals by having Santa fly in, not in a reindeer-drawn sleigh, but in a four-passenger monoplane that delivered its portly passenger to the Harrison-Oak Park Avenue shopping area in decidedly modern style. Avoiding rooftops, Santa’s plane apparently landed along the railroad right of way that is now part of the Eisenhower expressway.

 
Santa (aka Park Superintendent Gus Lindberg) arrives
in style in 1936
Along with his pilot and plane, Santa stayed three days dispensing gifts, raffle tickets and taking orders sent directly to his workshop by radio, before taking off, presumably heading back to the North Pole to prepare for his regular Christmas eve visit.

Three years later the Oak Park Chamber of Commerce’s plan for Santa’s arrival included using connections with railroad officials to engineer a special stop in Oak Park at Marion Street and North Boulevard by the express passenger train “The City of Denver.” 

Hiding his identity from even his family, Park Superintendent Gus Lindberg, after whom Lindberg Park is named, slipped aboard in Iowa, changed into full Santa regalia and emerged from the gleaming yellow “streamliner” to a cheering crowd of 5,000 local children, parents, ten clowns, and Oak Park Village President James “Jimmy” Howe.  Santa/Lindberg then led a procession to the Lake Theater for a special children’s program.

Over the years department store Santas charmed Oak Park and River Forest children at The Fair, Wieboldt’s, Marshall Field’s, Gilmore’s and Walker’s. 

Today those stores are just memories. But Santa still comes to town and hopefully always will.


By Robert Messer
Sources: Oak Leaves, 12/14/33, and 12/10/36, and memoir by Margaret Ade, 11/18/78 in Subject File, Holiday folder

.