West Chester museum renovation to honor VOA’s worldwide influence
Staff
Writer, Journal-News
WEST CHESTER
TWP. —
Jack
Dominic walked out the front of the National Voice of America Museum
of Broadcasting to welcome the unannounced guest.
Speaking
with a thick Russian accent, the man explained the purpose of his
visit to Dominic, the museum’s executive director: “I have been
wanting to come here for years. I just live down the street. I’ve
got something for you.”
Opening
the trunk of his car, the man and his wife pulled out a worn,
nondescript shortwave radio — one manufactured by the Soviet Union
in the early 1960s at the height of the Cold War — and presented it
Dominic with an explanation.
“We
call this our under-the-blanket radio,” said the man, who
previously lived in Ukraine and used the radio in the 1960s and
1970s. “Most of my neighbors would have one like it.”
The
radio, like countless others, was specifically designed to receive
only Soviet transmissions, effectively blocking out news broadcasts
from the outside world.
“He
called it the under-the-blanket radio because nobody was supposed to
be able to do this,” Dominic said, adding that everybody “knew a
guy” who could.
However,
many resourceful people found others who could doctor the device so
it received Voice of America broadcasts, which originated in the
United States from West Chester’s Voice of America Bethany Relay
Station.
Situated
along Tylersville Road near Voice of America MetroPark, the facility
and its technology served as the main conduit for the United States
to present news, entertainment and educational programming from
actual press agencies to people worldwide hungering for facts instead
of state-fed propaganda.
On
Oct. 17, a woman from Loveland with a Polish accent stopped by the
museum for an open house and told Dominic she had been very active in
Poland’s Solidarity movement, which fought for the country’s
independence in the 1980s.
“She
was actually put in jail because she published stuff that they didn’t
want to see and she said she had a radio like this,” Dominic said.
An
interview Dominic conducted with a man from a former Soviet satellite
country succinctly captured the importance of VOA’s mission to
spread factual information far and wide.
“He
said, ‘In Russia, airplanes never crashed. Crops were always good.
We knew better than that.’”
Hardly
a month goes by without someone dropping by the museum to share the
importance of the relay station in their lives, Dominic said.
“They
find out that this place is here and it’s unbelievable. They have
tears in their eyes,” he said. “They all say the same thing: ‘I
never thought I would see where these broadcasts were coming from.’
That’s the power of this place.”
Stories
like those are why the VOA Museum embarked in 2013 on a $12 million
capital campaign, one that this month launched renovation efforts
meant to improve aesthetics, create handicapped accessibility and
carve out areas for both temporary and permanent exhibits, as well as
a multipurpose area for lectures and workshops.
The
revamp is aimed at providing the ultimate way to highlight the Voice
of America Bethany Relay Station’s legacy: keeping millions of
people worldwide informed.
Constructed
in 1944, the Voice of America Bethany Relay Station in West Chester
Twp. was one of three, with similar facilities in New York and
California, Dominic said.
“They
didn’t want to put too many eggs in a basket on the East Coast and
they didn’t want to put too many eggs in a basket on the West Coast
because of the U-Boats and all of that,” he said.
The
Butler County facility was the main transmission facility for new,
entertainment and educational programming going to Europe, North
Africa and South America.
“From
1945 until 1995, it operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with
six of the most powerful (short-wave) transmitters in the world,”
Dominic said. “They were 2 million watts each.”
The
facility, which once sat on a sprawling property on the northeast
corner of Tylersville and Cox roads, was decommissioned in 1995. Most
of the land went to Voice of America MetroPark and the Voice of
America Centre shopping complex. Now the broadcast towers that stood
as blinking landmarks to passing motorists on Interstate 75 are gone
and the iconic, art deco building sits on a significantly smaller
property that many motorists likely pass without knowing its vast,
impactful history.
Tours
of the facility, including various historical exhibits, occur on the
third Saturday of each month. Renovation efforts would change that to
make the museum a six-days-a-week operation, Dominic said.
But
the renovation effort is not a matter of building something “to
house a bunch of old tubes and radios,” he said.
“There
will be some old tubes and radios, but that’s not what this place
is about,” Dominic said. “This place is to recognize and to
celebrate the tremendous importance then and today of factual,
truthful communication. “To preserve the whole concept of free and
clear truthful information is not a historical remnant, it’s
something we need to continue today.”
President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose idea it was to develop the Voice of
America effort, did so because Nazi Germany understood state-run
media and the power it had to control and sway the masses, Dominic
said.
“They
had a whole division of propaganda and movies and … Hitler
subsidized the purchase of shortwave radios for the German people,
but guess what? They only received their channels,” he said.
The
reason behind how Butler County ended up with such a facility in the
first place should inspire pride, Dominic said.
“When
they decided they wanted to build a facility like this, with
high-powered transmitters, the only people in the entire United
States that had the engineering prowess was (Powell Crosby Jr.),”
he said.
Dominic
said once such basics as heating, air conditioning, lighting and
chairs are in place, a wide variety of displays and programming are
envisioned.
“We
want to have dialogue, maybe a lecture series on the importance of
factual communication,” he said. “People who don’t pay
attention to history are (doomed) to repeat it.”
A
revamped VOA Museum also would mean a better way to exhibit the
history and development of radio as a medium and the history of radio
and TV broadcasting in Cincinnati, including everything from legions
of singers, musicians and comedians to actors, journalists and the
inventor of program syndication.
Before
any of that can happen, the museum must reach its $12 million
fundraising goal, including a $3 million endowment, Dominic said.
“Anyone
who knows anything about museums … realizes that a turnstile is not
going to fund it,” he said. “You’ve got to have reserves.
Before we go full bore, we need to be sure we have an endowment.
“You
can build this thing, but if you don’t have money to run it, you’re
just digging yourself a hole.”
The National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting is trying to raise money for enhancements to the historic complex in West Chester Twp. NICK GRAHAM/STAFF
Voice
of America Museum Director Jack Dominic sits in front of the
transmitter control console at the National Voice of America Museum
of Broadcasting in West Chester Twp. NICK GRAHAM/STAFF
