by Anne Edwards
On election night, the results came in with unprecedented speed. By nine P.M., Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected president, carrying forty-two of the forty-eight states, Illinois included. According to the law at the time, the president-elect would not take the oath of office until March 4, 1932 (four months later). Hoover would preside over a lame-duck government, and no drastic changes could be effected through the long, hard months that faced the nation.
Radio had invaded the lives of millions. Even the poorest could be found huddled around a set in drugstores, club rooms and soup kitchens, listening to the play-by-play descriptions of the World Series games. Those who had radios in their homes listened religiously to Amos and Andy weeknights at six P.M. Most programs were reviewed by critics in major cities, and that ineluded sports coverage. In the first football game Dutch broadcast, Iowa lost to Minnesota, 21-6. Radio WOC had relayed the program through NBC affiliate Radio WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, where it was transmitted throughout the Midwest. Heavy rain had fallen on the field that day and the Chicago Tribune critic wrote, “[Reagan’s] crisp account of the muddy struggle sounded like a carefully written story of the gridiron goings-on and his quick tongue seemed to be as fast as the plays.” By the end of the fourth game, Dutch had become a virtuoso in his new field. Yet, as Christmas approached, he did not know how he was going to hang in unless something happened fast. Pete MacArthur called to tell him the station was trying to work things out. For another two rather desperate weeks, Dutch contemplated other, more menial ways of making a living, swinging a pick-ax if necessary. Then MacArthur was back on the telephone to offer him a staff announcer’s job to start immediately at one hundred dollars a month—a king’s ransom in 1932.
Bridges across the Mississippi connected Davenport (then a city of about seventy thousand) to Rock Island, Moline and East Moline. The four towns were known as the Quad Cities and the combined populations made Davenport, which was the center, a growing and busy metropolitan area. Davenport had started life as a trading post and was the site of a grim battle of the War of 1812 as well as the place where the treaty for the Black Hawk War had been signed. Before the late nineteenth century, the city had possessed a heavy water traffic. Then it became a center for the manufacture of agricultural equipment. With the depressed farm situation, the city had been severely hit and the tone had changed from rushing commerce to desperate times as banks closed, along with factories, and the lines at soup kitchens and unemployment offices grew daily. However, such deprivation fed the box offices of the movies, where people spent the few pennies they had to escape from reality, and ushered in the glory years of radio, which came into people’s homes free, providing they were able to afford one in the first place. Time payments became a way of life, with radios and refrigerators as the main items being purchased.
Dutch rented a room for $8 a week, bought a weekly meal ticket at the Palmer Chiropractic School—”three meals a day every day”—for $3.65 and sent Nelle $5 a week. Moon still had to be helped if he was going to continue at Eureka, and so Dutch went to see the pastor at the local Christian Church. “Would the Lord consider His share as being His, if I gave the 10% to Moon to help him through school?” The pastor agreed that it would seem a proper Christian act and so Moon got $2.50 a week and Dutch kept $5, some of which went to repaying his college loan. The “king’s ransom” had dwindled into “eking by.” He had to live close to the line, but “just to gild the lily” he gave a dime each morning on his walk to work “to the first fellow who asked for a cup of coffee,” a gesture that did as much to add to his own sense of well-being as it did to help the recipient of his handout.
His job did not have the glamour or the excitement he had expected. Locally played football games were few and far between. WOC had him fill in as a disc jockey spinning records for hours, interspersing the music with the reading of commercials, a job he did not do too well, being unable, because of his poor eyesight, to read glibly from a script the first time, even with the aid of his glasses. His co-anchorman at the station was Hugh Hippie, a Philadelphian with grand hopes of becoming a great actor. Hippie (who later would break into films as Hugh Marlowe) had a very solemn approach to acting. After three weeks of flipping records and announcing organ music from the Runge Mortuary, Dutch was told his services would have to be suspended but the station would call him again to cover sports events. His world had suddenly collapsed. He turned to Hippie for comfort and encouragement. “I’ve always believed the kindest thing a man can do in this business is tell someone when they should get another line of work,” Hippie intoned.
Dutch did not agree. When the station gave him a short reprise because his replacement had not worked out, his anger was diminished and his commercials had a good punch and conversational pitch. MacArthur asked him to stay on. The relief was enormous.
On March 2, 1932, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt and their son, James, arrived by train in Washington for the inauguration two days later. They moved into a suite at the Mayflower Hotel, where they would remain until the transition to the White House. The following day they were invited to call upon the Hoovers for tea. Only months before, Hoover had delayed his entrance a half hour at a White House governors reception while Roosevelt stood on the rostrum with James’s help, waiting. Hoover’s intent had been to force Roosevelt into exposing his weakness by asking for a chair. Eleanor had never forgiven him and she was noticeably cool. “Tea was concluded with minimum conversation.” When James went to help his father to rise from a chair and settle into his wheelchair, Roosevelt told Hoover not to wait since the process took some time. Hoover, unsmiling, replied, “Mr. Roosevelt, you will learn that the President of the United States waits for no one,” and stalked out.
A cold wind swept Washington on Saturday, March 4, the day of the inauguration. A huge crowd was gathered in the streets surrounding the site of the ceremony. “What are those things that look like cages?” someone in one of the huddled groups asked. “Machine guns,” she was told. If the FBI expected trouble, they were wrong. At noon, a bugle blew and Franklin D. Roosevelt, supported by James, walked down a special maroon-carpeted ramp to the platform and took the oath of office on a Dutch Bible that had been in the Roosevelt family for three hundred years. In his resonant, moving voice with the accented Groton a, the new president told the nation: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” His inaugural speech set forth three main areas where action must be swift—public works for the unemployed, a rise in farm prices and “strict supervision” of the bankers. Action is exactly what the nation wanted, and he gave it to them. By working through the entire first night of his presidency, he was ready the next day, Sunday, to summon a special session of Congress. A bank holiday for the entire country was announced along with a new bank bill. Congress passed this by a voice vote in the House.
On March 12, Roosevelt went on the air with his first fireside chat. “My friends, I want to talk to you for a few minutes… about banking,” he said in a warm, intimate voice. He then proceeded to assure the nation that it was “safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under a mattress.” The people believed him, and by the end of the next banking day, deposits exceeded withdrawals by a healthy margin. Four days later he sent Congress farm legislation that he hoped would establish and maintain a balance between production and consumption of agricultural commodities. Happy days were not exactly here again, however.
A downward drift in farm prices began toward summer and took a serious dip by autumn. Roosevelt, who had once referred to himself as “the quarterback of the offensive against the Depression,” saw the game going against him and tried a forward pass. The government deliberately raised the price of gold, which in turn lowered the dollar in terms of other goods as well. By January 1934 the dollar had been devalued (in terms of gold) to 59.06 cents. But prices had not risen proportionately. Roosevelt�
��s plan was a failure, and as the winter of 1933-34 set in, his New Deal’s once-solid support was slipping badly.
In Dixon, Moon’s former employer, the Medusa Cement Company, had closed, throwing a thousand more of the city’s ten thousand into the lines of the unemployed. Jack was given a job with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) distributing food and paper scrip to Dixon’s distressed. The pay would not have kept him off the Relief rolls himself if Nelle had not had her job at the Marilyn Shop. He operated from a desk in the anteoffice of the County Supervisor of the Poor. Daily lines formed at his door. Most of the men and women were people he had known for years. The look of defeat in their eyes was difficult for him to face each day. They did not want handouts, they wanted jobs, and he knew that. Any extra time he had was spent cajoling people with income into making jobs for others. But there were not enough jobs to restore even momentary pride in more than a few. Within a very short time, although almost everyone wanted to work, people had to refuse Jack’s offers of a temporary job. By working a few days, they would have their Relief cut off and weeks of no income for their families would pass before they were permitted to go back on the assistance list.
Not until November 26, 1933, with the start of the Civic Works Program, would Dixon begin to find jobs for the unemployed. On that morning, 136 men went to work on several state highway department improvement programs which consisted chiefly “of minor grading projects, removal of brush, trees and stumps.” Another 35 men were hired to remove Dixon’s old streetcar tracks and an equal number to improve the roads and fences at Lowell Park. The Telegraph reported on November 26 that “supplies of shovels, picks and axes, have been practically exhausted and equipment has had to be borrowed to get the work started at once.” On the average, men were paid five dollars a day. But two hundred or so jobs did not end Dixon’s problems.
Anger and frustration drove Jack on, but they also took their toll on his health. His heart gave him warning signs that he chose to ignore. One good thing had managed to evolve from the pressures of the times. He had curbed his great thirst considerably. The days of Jack’s government employment were, perhaps, the finest of his life, more exciting and fulfilling than any previous experience. The desperation and hope had helped him discover a capacity to fight for others as well as himself. The humiliating days of defeat were behind him. Like millions of others of his countrymen, Jack Reagan had caught a glimpse of what he could achieve and what America might become.
* In 1933, perhaps the worst year of the Depression, Walgreen’s advertising budget went over a million dollars and the company was one of the few in America to pay regular dividend payments to stockholders.
* When Reagan returned to Dixon in August 1978, Joyce approached him. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked, referring to their high school basketball team. “Sure I do,” Reagan replied. “You’re the guy who beat me out of that job at Montgomery Ward.”
7
ON A CRISP, BRIGHT MORNING IN LATE APRIL 1933, just three months after Dutch had moved to Davenport, Pete MacArthur sent him to Radio WHO, an NBC affiliate in Des Moines, to broadcast the Drake Relays, one of the most prestigious amateur track events in the country. Dutch arrived in Des Moines (home of Drake University, a Christian school associated with Eureka College) not fully aware of the vast audience for the track event. The spontaneity involved in live sports coverage served his talents well. In the forty-eight hours from the time he knew of his assignment until he was ushered into the broadcast booth, he had read up on past Drake Relays and memorized biographical material on former champions and current contenders. His between-race commentaries had the stamp of an expert at the microphone and his race-by-race coverage contained the surge of excitement of a knowledgeable, enthusiastic spectator-announcer.
He returned to Davenport after the relay, but within a few days the owner of WOC and WHO decided to consolidate the stations. A number of the WOC staff, including Pete MacArthur, were transferred to Des Moines. Dutch was offered the job of chief sports announcer at double his old salary. A week later, he had packed his one suitcase, left Davenport and moved into a second-floor accommodation in a rooming house owned by a Miss Plummer at 330 Center Street, across from Broadlawns General Hospital and within walking distance of the station. Then he called to tell Nelle and Margaret of his good fortune. Margaret informed him that she was planning to spend a year in France with her sister, Helen, as soon as the school term was over.
“Where does that leave us?” he asked.
“With time to find ourselves,” she replied.
Dutch had thought that he had found himself and that his rise in income might well support two, but Margaret had made up her mind. She would sail in June. Where exactly did this leave Dutch? As one of Des Moines’s most eligible bachelors.
Des Moines (population 142,569 in 1932) was the largest metropolitan area in Iowa. It was twice the size of Davenport and, as the capital, boasted a more political atmosphere. Living in a larger city had a great many advantages for a bachelor, the chance to enjoy a fairly private personal life not the least of them. In addition, many well-known celebrities came through on personal-appearance and publicity tours and one of Dutch’s new jobs (between sports events) was to interview these people. Within a short time, not only was his voice familiar to most midwestern sports enthusiasts but Dutch Reagan had become a local celebrity and was on a first-name basis with Iowa’s top politicos as well as with the stars whom he met in his work. The change in his life had been swift and dramatic. Yet, he took to it easily; in fact, as one associate puns, “as to the manner born.”
Radio was an “exciting and exuberant” enterprise in the early 1930s. Radio WHO had just become a major station when Dutch joined the staff. They broadcast a good portion of the nation’s most popular programs to the Midwest, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve and Lum and Abner among them. “WHO had only recently acquired fifty thousand watts of power on a clear channel,” the station’s farm reporter, Jack Shelley, remembered. “We were serving thousands of people in small towns and on the farms who were ecstatic at what we could give them and who demonstrated a kind of loyalty and appreciation unknown to radio stations today. We [the staff] liked each other and what we were doing; in news, sports, and very shortly, farm service. We were breaking new ground almost every day, thanks to a visionary general manager named J. O. Maland who was one of the great pioneers of broadcast operation.
“[Dutch] was not technically a member of the news staff. Sports was in most respects a separate operation reporting to top management [Maland], just as the news director did. Except for use of such news services as were available (and they were few in the early thirties because the wire services refused to sell to radio), the sports director operated separately and from a separate office.”
In addition to being the WHO sportscaster, Dutch was the announcer on the H[arold] R[oyce] Gross newscast sponsored by Kentucky Club, a pipe-tobacco firm, and on occasion substituted for other announcers on noon or evening broadcasts. Because of his tobacco sponsor, he took up smoking a pipe and was seldom photographed in those years without one.
Radio WHO was located in the Stoner Building at 914 Walnut Street in downtown Des Moines. The Stoner Piano Company occupied business and office space on the ground floor, where immense display windows filled with pianos faced the street. Dutch’s office was on the opposite side of a long, arcade-lined entrance to the three-story building. At the back of the ground floor were two large broadcast studios separated by the master control room; a much smaller studio (“a cubby hole of a room with a curtain at the door”) halfway back was assigned to Dutch to broadcast the sports. The news and program facilities and the administrative offices were on the second floor. Apartments occupied the top floor (there were no elevators). This division of departments meant that Dutch was left on his own a lot. But from the beginning of his employment at Radio WHO he made friends.
Herb Plambeck, who participated in the network’s
The National Farm and Home Hour, recalled that “Dr. B. J. Palmer, head of the Palmer School of Chiropractic, was owner [of stations WOC, Davenport; and WHO, Des Moines]. He was a gruff, somewhat eccentric, likable person, with a world of great personal interest in everything and everybody, and knew most employees on a first-name basis.… Dutch Reagan was one of his special favorites. Our ‘boss,’ Mr. Joseph Maland, a Minnesotan, was one of the sharpest, shrewdest, nicest ‘bosses’ anyone could ever meet.… He had what I would call a compassionate, as well as a business, interest in every one of us [about thirty-five staff members]. He made us feel like one happy family and let us do ‘our thing’ our way.”
Myrtle Williams,* then WHO program director and occasional vocalist and piano accompanist, struck up a close friendship with Dutch, but not without some stress. “It was one of those things,” she explained. “He had come in with some of his WOC colleagues and the WHO staff were nervous they might lose their jobs to the newcomers. Dutch didn’t seem as aggressive as the others. He understood this was not easy for the rest of us. I could tell he wanted to make friends; he wanted to feel at home with someone.” Soon she was won over by him. “He had a presence, a direction. If he wanted to read a certain book you couldn’t move him. I admired that.”
Myrtle was an attractive, dark-haired woman about two years older than Dutch. She had a good-fellow personality that made her “one of the guys.” She, Dutch and news director H. R. Gross (later congressman from the 3rd District of Iowa) often lunched together at a restaurant on the airport road (Fluer Drive) where they had barbecued ribs; they would call this “getting a rib facial” because they got grease from the ribs all over their faces. Herb Plambeck recalled that “Dutch and Mr. Gross used to have great banterings back and forth” (Gross was a Republican and Dutch tried his best—and failed—to sell him the New Deal). His other WHO friends included two announcers, Jack Kerrigan (later program director) and Ernie Saunders. After a late night at the station, the men would stop by Cy’s Moonlight Inn for some near beer spiked with alcohol, bought (so Cy Griffiths, the owner, claimed) from government agents (and therefore safe). Cy’s was a tradition with the more pleasure-loving of Des Moines’s citizens (including some of the coaching staff at Drake University), and even though Dutch did not drink much, he liked the camaraderie of these evenings. He also made good use of the Moonlight’s “passion pit,” a small dimly lit dance floor where Cy’s patrons could dance cheek to cheek to “smooth music” that came from a jukebox—the first and only one in Des Moines at the time. One close friend, Paul McGinn, said that “if everyone else wanted to get tight, Dutch could always drive the car home.”
