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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Above, from left: Chuck Holmes, William Dahlberg, Gigi Douban and Michael Krall pose inside WBHM’s studio. Several of the NPR station's employees have made Homewood their place of residence.
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Photos courtesy of Steven Westbrook and the Alabama Historical Radio Society.
The Alabama Historical Radio Society, using photos and first-hand accounts, reconstructed Joe Rumore’s basement studio for display at the society’s headquarters at the Don Kresge Memorial Museum.
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Photos courtesy of Steven Westbrook and the Alabama Historical Radio Society.
An original Associated Press teletype machine was donated by Don Kirkpatrick to the society in the name of Courtney Haden at the 2017 Legends of Broadcast luncheon in April.
From news and information to jazz and classical music, central Alabama’s public radio station aims to provide something for a diverse base of listeners.
That listener base includes a portion of the Homewood community — of WBHM’s roughly 8,000 contributing members, 750 of them are Homewood residents. And that figure doesn’t include those who listen to the station but aren’t members.
“That’s a huge percentage,” said William Dahlberg, the station’s membership manager.
And Homewood, it seems, not only fosters radio listeners, but has also historically been home to some of the area’s most influential radio personalities.
One of the most famous was Joe Rumore, who, after a long studio career as an in-studio radio personality, decided to move his operations to the basement of his Homewood home.
“He was a unique personality who was able to connect with people,” said Jim Cawthon, who was a young boy at the time Rumore was doing his broadcasts from his home.
Cawthon said he and his friends would ride their bicycles through the streets of Homewood, stopping in front of Rumore’s home to listen to his radio show as it was happening.
With his “everyman” style and ability to weave promotions and contests in an entertaining way, Rumore was a magnet for everyone, Cawthon said.
“Listening to him on the radio, you instantly felt a connection to this guy because he was so folksy,” he said.
Though he said he didn’t know it at the time, Cawthon said, those days of following radio personalities as a child would eventually lead to a long broadcast career of his own.
Homewood was also the home of Courtney Haden, the writer, studio executive and humorous host famous for spoofing “Rocky Top” on the Finebaum show. Haden, co-owner of Boutwell Studios on Central Avenue, died in January, but his family continues to live in Homewood.
“He was a word-meister; he could say it and make it make sense in five words or less,” Cawthon said. He was also known to be a character, with the “Rocky Top” bit being only one of a “million voices.”
Rumore and Haden were honored in April by the Alabama Historical Radio Society for their contributions to the craft.
Today, the Homewood connection to the radio industry lives on through the team at WBHM. Four members of the station’s management team are Homewood residents, including Dahlberg, News Director Gigi Douban, General Manager Chuck Holmes and Program Director Michael Krall.
Holmes, the most recent to move to Homewood, took over the general manager job at the first of the year.
When house hunting, Holmes said, he and his wife were drawn to Homewood for a number of reasons, especially the sidewalks and tight-knit neighborhoods. “And I heard a lot of good things about Homewood from my new colleagues,” he said.
Holmes took the position at WBHM after working in Washington, D.C., at National Public Radio as the deputy managing editor for news. He said he and his wife are both from the South, and he was looking for a way to find a better work-life balance. When the opportunity at WBHM came up, he jumped at it.
Both Krall and Dahlberg had family ties to the Homewood area that led them to eventually settle in the city, and Douban said that while she at one time lived down U.S. 280, she knew that if she was going to stay in the Birmingham area, Homewood was where she wanted to put down roots.
“There was something about Homewood that reminded me of my neighborhood growing up in New York,” she said, also citing the sidewalks and the coziness of the city’s density.
Ultimately, it was diversity that Douban said drew her to Homewood. “Homewood’s not the only city with great sidewalks and shops and restaurants and libraries, but it’s in the end about the people — that’s what makes Homewood unique and special,” she said.
It’s serving that diverse population, along with the rest of central Alabama, that the team said continues to drive their service as radio journalists, even in a changing time.
“We just don’t put out a radio signal anymore,” Holmes said.
In April, the station held its largest fund drive, raising more than $322,000 in under a week. “People don’t necessarily want to listen to a fund drive if they don’t have to,” Holmes said of the station’s “All the Money in Half the Time” campaign, “so we thought we could make our case and get back to business as usual.”
The drive even had to take breaks on Wednesday of that week due to severe weather in the area, and again that Friday because of the impending resignation of then Gov. Robert Bentley. Holmes said it’s that kind of local news coverage the team hopes to continue to build at the station in order to serve the diverse population of the city.
“We don’t have one type of public radio listener, and you see that so clearly in a place like Homewood,” Douban said. “It’s not a homogenous city, and that’s one of the beautiful things about it, but it’s a reflection on what we do, and our coverage, and how we try very hard to be sure that we include all the different voices on an issue, and I think people respond to that.”
Calling all radio fans:
The Alabama Historical Radio Society, founded in 1989, aims to provide opportunities for radio enthusiasts of all ages to learn about the industry’s history and connect with other fans and experts.
The society meets most Saturday at 9 a.m., and on the fourth Monday of each month at 6 p.m. At meetings, members often bring restoration projects for others to see or give lectures on the history of an item or person, and meetings are open to all. Meetings are held at the Don Kresge Memorial Museum, located at 600 N. 18th St. in Birmingham. For more information, visit alabamahistoricalradiosociety.org.
