http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2016-03-05/story/florida-man-donated-150-radios-georgia-radio-hall-fameFlorida man donated 150 radios to Georgia Radio Hall of Fame
By Terry Dickson Sat, Mar 5, 2016 @ 5:12 pm | updated Sat, Mar 5, 2016 @ 5:18 pm
ST. MARYS | Somewhere on the highways between Sebring and St. Marys on Wednesday, Lamar Heath could have turned the radio on the rental truck he was driving to a station that played “On the Road Again.”
He was hauling a cargo of 150 old radios on the truck that probably played “Your Cheatin’ Heart,’’ FDR’s announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and some Tommy Dorsey, Guy Lombardo and Frank Sinatra. Heath drove the radios, some of which dated to the 1920s, and put them in the care of John Long, director and curator of the Georgia Radio Museum and Hall of Fame in St. Marys.
For the time being, however, they’re in storage because Long said he doesn’t have room to display 150 more radios in the one-room museum with a display of 50 radios, an old radio studio when vinyl LPs were the norm and other memorabilia.
Explaining his donation, Heath said, “We don’t have room for everything,’’ and his wife, Karin, agreed.
Heath said he would likely miss some of the radios once he got back home, but added, “I’ve got plenty left.”
Among those he still has is a Zenith shutter dial console and a 1938 Stewart-Warner wooden cabinet radio.
“When you look at it from the end, it looks like a spade in a deck of cards, a really high-end radio,’’ he said. “The kids can fight over it after I’m gone.”
Perhaps one of his daughters, Lisa Jinkins, staked out a sweat equity claim, having come from Brunswick to help unload the radios.
It’s not as if old radios have been a lifelong pursuit for Heath, who was in the Navy during Korea and then spent a career with a federal agency that kept tabs on savings and loans banks.
Heath said he collected most over a seven-year period starting around 1990.
“When I started, I was buying with a vengeance,’’ he said. “Hell, if it had knobs, I bought it.”
Most of the radios were silent when Heath bought them so he repaired them. He learned early on that the filters, which are large capacitors, were the problem.
“That’s what usually goes bad. Old resistors hang in pretty good. I’d replace the filter, turn them on and a lot of them would play,’’ he said.
Among those he donated were some upright wooden consoles with beautiful wood. There was a little veneer missing on some, but Heath said that’s easily fixed.
Some were wooden Crosley tabletop models with cloth covers over the speaker, but there were a few small radios made of Bakelite, an early form of plastic.
The dial of a Westinghouse console, probably manufactured in the 1940s, gave the option of short wave, medium wave or regular broadcasts. Its row of six preset buttons had the call letters of WAGA, WSB, WGST and WATL, all Atlanta stations, and WLW in Cincinnati and WSM, the Nashville station that still broadcasts the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights.
Long said he welcomes the radios, but doesn’t know how he will display them.
He went to the St. Marys Convention and Visitors Bureau board, which provided room for the museum in its St. Marys office, and asked to expand into an unused space but was turned down.
“We’re going to have to grow,’’ Long said. “It would be impressive to see 150 radios along with the 50 already there along with a lot of equipment.”
Long said it’s become evident a lot of people in Georgia and Florida want to donate to the museum, but space is a problem.
Most visitors say good things about the museum in the visitors registry. About the only criticism, Long said, has been, “I expected something a little bigger.”
Displaying even a fraction of Heath’s donation will require something bigger.
Terry Dickson: (912) 264-0405
Topic: “Hell, if it had knobs, I bought it.” (Read 1976 times)