July/Aug 2022 (Volume 14, Issue 4)

 

(Publisher’s note: This is the third of a three-part series about the first century of radio broadcasting in Iowa. Selected photos and text are from the author’s book, “Making Waves: The People and Places of Iowa Broadcasting,” available at totallyiowa.com; additional material comes from the Archives of the Grout Museum of History and Science, Waterloo, Iowa.)

 

By Jeff Stein

 

As a boy growing up near Finchford in rural Black Hawk County, Joe DuMond never dreamed of being a beloved national radio personality, much less becoming the founder of a groundbreaking powerhouse radio station near his hometown.

 

Then again, when Joe Dumond was a boy — radio had not yet been invented.

 

But the impact he would have on the fledgling industry is still being felt today, as the station he founded in Waterloo, KXEL, marks its 80th anniversary this summer.

 

DuMond was born in Finchford on Nov. 21, 1898. The family moved to nearby Waterloo when Joe was seven, and he soon discovered a talent for music. Following graduation from East High School, he took to the road as a touring Chautauqua performer, “penetrating every one of the 48 states, and every province of Canada,” as one newspaper article noted in 1930. During the winters, he studied at what was then called Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls.

 

After a decade as a “trouper” — and five years after marrying childhood sweetheart Irene Rohde — DuMond was weary of the road and wanted a more stable life.

 

Around that same time, the owner of the Waterloo Morning Tribune newspaper bought a Cedar Rapids radio station and moved it north to Waterloo, changing its call letters to WMT to match the name of the newspaper. DuMond jumped at the chance to join the new radio station’s staff as program director, with studios in the Russell Lamson Hotel downtown.

 

At that time, radio station entertainment programming was made up of live performances, with announcers occasionally playing recordings. DuMond scripted and acted in a regular program on WMT, entitled “The Nuts and Bolts Dramatic Society,” which allowed him to continue the type of performing he had done on the stage … but instead of traveling to perform before audiences, in radio, the audiences in essence came to him.

 

In a special broadcast marking KXEL’s 35th anniversary in 1977, DuMond told the story of a chance occurrence that changed the course of his life.

 

“It was our policy in those days to make a trade with a local music store to give the store radio spots for the use of its records. My arrangements were made with the Strobel Music Store, located then near the corner of Fifth and Sycamore Streets. This particular night, I had played all the records which I had borrowed from Mr. Strobel. In fact, some of the records had been repeated several times,” DuMond recalled.

 

“I will never know what caused me to put aside the records and start talking about my youth, recalling the days in Finchford when I went to the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society with my mother, taking part in the goings on of the village — in fact, experiencing a kind of rebirth ‘by the bend of the river,’” he said.

 

That night, with apparently no preparation other than his fertile creative mind, DuMond slipped into a character he created on the spot to tell the stories. The storyteller was named Josh Higgins.

 

TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY AND OTHER FASCINATING STORIES ABOUT IOWA HISTORY, subscribe to Iowa History Journal.