NORTHAMPTON — At 12:58 p.m. on Dec. 3, 1950, Hampshire County’s first radio station went live. Listeners tuned their AM dials to 1400 as the station broadcast the national anthem. WHMP played music with news every hour, on the hour from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Over the years, the radio became recognized as the “Voice of the Pioneer Valley.”
Some residents may remember the voices of Bob Balise from the 1950s “Early Bird of the Dawn Patrol” and news broadcast by Ron Hall starting in the 1960s until 2003.
Barbara Kuschka has worked at the station since 1969 and remembers listening to WHMP when she was 4 years old. “I grew up listening to it,” she said. “My grandmother never shut it off.”
Kuschka was attending Northampton Junior College when she heard of a job opening at the station and jumped at the opportunity. Every day after class, Kuschka would type up the radio station’s program log. Today, she is the station’s traffic manager.
The station was started by Nathan Williams, a local dentist. In the late 1960s, Williams’ great-nephew, Charles N. DeRose, bought the station, and it passed on to his sons, Peter L. DeRose and Charles W. DeRose, former co-publishers of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
The DeRoses owned WHMP until 1983 when it was sold to Robert F.X. Sillerman and Bruce Marrow of New York. The ownership of the station went through several changes in the 1990s before it was bought by current owner Saga Communications in 2000.
To celebrate the milestone of 65 years on the air, WHMP held a celebration and open house at the station at 15 Hampton Ave. on Wednesday where Mayor David Narkewicz presented a proclamation.
“WHMP stands by the belief that local media is an essential ingredient to an engaged populace,” Narkewicz read from the proclamation.
During the past month, WHMP has hosted interviews with past-on air personalities including Jim Campbell, Dave Madsen and Barry Kriger.
Dave Madsen, of Southampton, now an anchor at Western Mass News in Springfield, started working at WHMP when he was 19 and a student at the University of Massachusetts. From 1970 to 1979, Madsen worked in various positions at the radio from disc jockey to program director. He said the station was a great place to learn.
“I enjoyed spending more time at the radio station than I did at school,” Madsen said.
Also during the past month, old commercials and radio jingles were played over the air as part of the 65th anniversary celebration. While old commercials used to be recorded on tape and disposed of later, Kuschka kept a collection of commercials she voiced. She said most were for local businesses that are no longer open.
During the 1990s, Kuschka said the station moved from music to more talk radio.
Robert Flaherty, WHMP’s Morning News host, worked at the station for a period in the 1990s before returning in 2011 to host the morning show. He remembers the transition, because he had never done talk radio before.
At first, he found it intimidating, but said there are special moments during radio interviews that bring out character and the “real person emerges.”
“The station has evolved in different ways,” Kuschka said. “But it has always been community-oriented.”
Although WHMP transitioned into more talk radio, it kept its popular long-running polka broadcast.
Andrew Wiernasz aired his polka show every Sunday from the 1960s until his death in 2005, and it was very popular with the community, according to Kuschka.
And now the Polish music is back.
After broadcasting for nearly a decade on WMUA, “Polka Carousel” has moved to WHMP. The show’s host, Todd Zaganiacz, said that by moving to WHMP, the Sunday air time is now extended from two to four hours.
The first broadcast of “Polka Carousel” was aired Oct. 2 and Kuschka said the Polka segment is “more popular than ever.”
Caitlin Ashworth can be reached at cashworth@gazettenet.com.