Elizabethtown College’s 50th anniversary celebration of the College radio station WWEC 88.3 inspired Dr. Colin Helb.
The assistant professor of communications created an oral history project about the half-century-old station.
The endeavor consists of a series of video interviews with E-town alumni who share their stories of what the radio station and College campus were like 50 years ago. The project came about from a realization that there was not much history on the station. “We knew when it started and knew some of the names associated with it, but we didn’t really have any of the stories,” said Helb.
With the help of Alumni Relations, Helb was able to contact graduates through email to set up several days for them to come to campus to tell their stories in front of a camera. With six oral histories already collected, Helb hopes to arrange another day to hear the stories of more former students. “We have a list of about five or six people that we’ll be reaching out to, to get them on campus,” said Helb.
Alumni Barry Freidly chose to be a part of the project because of its importance to him during his college years. In 1965, he came to E-town as an accounting major but discovered the station after a couple of weeks and quickly became involved. “The ultimate outcome was that I switched to communications and ended up spending 25 years in television,” said Freidly.
There’s a lot of history to the station.”
The project allows for the campus and community to learn more about the evolution of the station. “WWEC began as a club, not associated with any department. The original funding was raised by the students,” said Freidly. “When that station went on ‘the air’, it was actually a closed-circuit AM station that ran through the dormitory power lines — you couldn’t receive it across College Avenue. There’s a lot of history to the station.”
Though the project does not have a set end date, the stories already recorded have been posted as rough edits. This means the stories can be viewed, but they are not in any sort of completed state. “I’m just going to keep collecting until I have what constellates as enough,” said Helb. “Eventually we will get to the point where we will have enough of them to edit something together and tell a narrative story.”