VOA MUSEUM: VOA MUSEUM EXHIBIT HALL NAMED FOR ENGINEER

By Denise G. Callahan
Staff Writer, Journal-News

Clyde Haehnle is a legend at The National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting, and he was honored as such this weekend.

The 93-year-old was to be the guest of honor at a reception at VOA on Friday for being “the driving force in the development of the museum.” He provided matching funds for renovation of the West garage at VOA, but being

a modest man, the former electrical engineer declined to name the size of his gift.

Haehnle started his career as a Crosley Broadcasting intern and went to work at VOA just prior to the Cold War, designing the antennas that would carry information across the globe. The VOA is precious to him.

“It was a historical event in the war, the Cold War, it contributed a great deal for the success of World War II and the Cold War,” he said.

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 during the Cold War.
The Voice of America Bethany Relay Station in West Chester Twp. was one of three, with similar facilities in New York and California. The Butler County facility was the main transmission facility for news, entertainment and educational programming going to Europe, North Africa and South America.

As vice president of engineering at WLW, he worked off and on at the VOA until 1962. He was involved in the design and construction of television stations in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis and seven stations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Jack Dominic, executive director of the museum, said Haehnle helped build the VOA Bethany station in 1944, and when the facility was decommissioned in the 1990s, he and a few others decided a museum was needed. An exhibit hall at the museum has been restored and will be named after Haehnle.

“Clyde has probably been the most significant person in the development of the museum,” he said.

Haehnle describes himself simply as “an old man,” but Dominic said he is anything but.

“He is brilliant,” Dominic said. “At 93 he’s feeble in gait but his mind is like a 14-year-old.”

Haehnle lost his wife of 68 years Ethel a week-and-a-half ago, and his son Gary was in from California — where he is a Superior Court judge — for the funeral. Gary said his parents always put his brother and three sisters first, and they never wanted for anything.

“He made sure we were able to fulfill our dreams; we all got to go to college. They just always made sure we had what we needed to get through life,” the judge said. “Sometimes they cut back on their stuff so we got ours; they sacrificed so we could make it.”

Haehnle, who has lived most of life in Finneytown, said his favorite thing to do was work, but he played a little golf at the Maketewah Country Club on the side. He has 13 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

“I never resented a day doing to work. It was always a challenge,” he said. “As I teach my grandsons, a man’s got two important decisions to make in life: most important is pick the right partner and second is pick the right career.”