In the free-wheeling days of live radio, anything could go wrong, and frequently did. Bob Wilson kept it together with his calm demeanor and reassuring voice.
The golden-throated announcer for WADC became one of Akron’s first radio personalities when he joined the station in 1926 less than a year after its debut.
Wilson owed his 40-year career to the whims of live broadcasting. Per usual, something went awry, but he happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Born Sept. 22, 1901, Robert Bennett Wilson, the son of Harry and Maria Wilson, grew up on North Hill and attended North and Central high schools. The city bought the family’s Mosser Place home, which stood in the middle of present-day North Main Street, to pave the way for the North Hill Viaduct. As a young man, Bob pumped gasoline and serviced automobiles for his father at the Wilson & Son filling station at 501 N. Main St. — where Parasson’s restaurant is today.
For amusement, Wilson and his pals started a jug band that played around town. Wilson’s task in the ensemble was to imitate a trombone. It wasn’t long before he stepped out front as a singer. The boys were surprised to discover their “trombonist” had a nice baritone voice.
When Allen T. Simmons founded WADC in 1925, the station invited a cavalcade of local talent to perform in its studio at the Fountain Room in the Portage Hotel. Wilson was among the live acts.
One day in 1926, the staff was in a tizzy because the announcer hadn’t shown up for work. Wilson was waiting to sing on a radio show, and somehow got coaxed into filling in as announcer.
Nervous and unprepared, he completely bombed.
“I was so lousy, I was ready to quit performing and go back to working in a gas station,” Wilson recalled decades later. “What made it worse, everyone who heard the show made it a point to tell me how bad I was.”
Simmons thought the kid had charisma, though, and hired him as an advertising salesman. Months later, when another opportunity arose on the WADC microphone, Wilson fared much better.
He spent hours each day with a dictionary to improve his pronunciation. The station eventually hired him as a full-time announcer, introducing programs, emceeing events and doing whatever else was needed.
Wilson became one of the best-known voices in town.
Live broadcasts crackled with energy and excitement. When things went wrong, audiences generally heard it. Wilson had many funny stories to share about miscues during WADC programs.
“I remember one of our dramatic shows when the sound effects got mixed up,” Wilson told the Beacon Journal in a 1962 interview. “There was a place when a car was supposed to come to a screeching stop, but the engineer got lost in the script and rang a telephone instead.”
Another time, a roving reporter went out on the street to interview pedestrians. Unfortunately, it was a cold winter day and no one walked past. Instead of switching the show back to the studio, the reporter decided to wing it.
“He just went through the 15-minute show, changing his voice and pretending to be a lot of fictional characters who were passing by,” Wilson recalled. “It was so cold and his teeth were chattering so much we didn’t understand what he was saying anyway.”
If guests failed to show up for cooking programs, Wilson occasionally was recruited to fill in as a guest chef.
“So I’d throw all kinds of things into a bowl, mix it a little and dump it into the oven to bake,” he said. “Sometimes I’d get something edible, but most of the time it came out just as bad as it went in. Believe me, this was junk, but no one seemed to mind the show.”
Wilson served as the emcee of a weekly children’s program before a studio audience. He remembered interviewing a fidgety 4-year-old girl on the air.
“What are you going to sing?” he asked her.
“Jesus Loves Me,” she replied. “And, oh, gee, I’ve got to go …”
The audience roared as the little crooner ran off to find a rest room.
During another segment, WADC had a goat, rabbit, dog and cat in the studio.
“Everything was peaceful until the dog took after the cat and pretty soon they started tearing up the studio,” Wilson said. “I couldn’t do anything to stop ’em, so instead I began describing the fight.”
Wilson had a reputation for being unflustered at the microphone. Some of his mischievous co-workers routinely tried to get him to break up while doing live announcements, but he remained the consummate professional.
“Once during a news broadcast, two of his friends methodically undressed him,” Beacon Journal columnist Oscar Smith wrote in 1946. “Bob’s voice went out over the air without a hitch, and he wound up almost without a stitch. Coat, shirt, necktie were gone and his trousers were down around his ankles.”
Wilson teamed with future Beacon Journal editor and publisher Ben Maidenburg on a 15-minute daily newscast, and they made some enemies with their hard-hitting reports. One day, they received a threat from a man who didn’t like their show.
“Ben and I shrugged it off, but then someone told us this guy was waiting for us downstairs,” Wilson recalled. “So Ben skipped out the back door, and I ran out a side door and we missed the guy. Luckily, he never came back.”
In addition to announcer, Wilson’s titles over the decades included production manager, assistant manager, vice president and station manager. WADC moved its studio to Tallmadge, then back downtown to Main and Mill streets in Akron.
When he wasn’t broadcasting, Wilson was busy being a husband and father. He and his wife, Jessie Marie, raised a daughter, Patricia.
Wilson supplemented his income by teaching radio classes at the University of Akron. In the mid-1950s, he added entrepreneur to his many titles, purchasing a frozen custard business in Fort Myers, Fla., where his family liked to vacation.
In the mid-1960s, WADC was sold and renamed WSLR, a country music station that operated for decades near Five Points. Today it’s Fox Sports 1350 WARF-AM.
Wilson and his wife retired to Florida in September 1966 — 40 years after his debut as a nervous, fill-in announcer. He returned home in 1983 for a gala ceremony in which he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Akron Radio Hall of Fame. He passed away three years later at age 84.
“Radio hasn’t changed much,” he told an interviewer in 1946. “That is, we’re still trying to please the listeners with good entertainment, music and special features.”
In the golden age of Akron radio, Bob Wilson truly shined.
Copy editor Mark J. Price is author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.