My Radio Career: Hello, Spencer Iowa!

I was the News Director at two radio stations in Northwestern Iowa for several years.

I have pleasant memories of my time spent there.  When I worked at KICD AM in Spencer, we broadcast live from the Clay County Fair every year, in the same building as the large, intricate model train display.  I was introduced to my first taste of corn cob jelly while broadcasting at the Clay County Fair.

At KIWA AM in Sheldon I enjoyed the last vestiges of a harmless payola; radio employees got a free pass into the movie theater next door.  (To set the record straight, I always paid for my own popcorn.)  I loved to drive down to the Loess Hills, stopping on the way to snap pictures of weary old barns, frozen in mid-collapse, on deserted farmsteads.

And people in that region put a slice of dill pickle in their beer bottles, which I’m still trying to figure out.

One thing I did NOT enjoy about my News Director position in Northwestern Iowa was pronouncing the names of the dead.  A small market radio station, such as the ones I worked at, derives a steady chunk of income from the broadcast of funeral announcements. Each funeral parlor in the home county of the radio station faxes over the announcement, as it is to appear in the local newspaper; it is then the News Director’s job to edit the information for inclusion in the next broadcast.  It is normally done three times a day; on the 8am newscast, the noon newscast, and the 6pm recap of the day’s news.  There are days when the funeral announcements run longer than the local news does – especially during the long, cold winter, when pneumonia settles in as an uninvited guest at all the local nursing homes.  Before coming to Iowa I had done radio news in North Dakota and Minnesota, so I thought I was prepared to do the obituary announcements – but I wasn’t.  Not with those tricky, pretzel-like Dutch names!

In the early 1900’s, according to the local history books, several thousand families, all members of the Dutch Reformed Church, came to settle in Clay and O’Brien counties in Iowa.  They not only brought their rigorous religion with them, but they brought some pretty darn challenging surnames, too!  I was used to dealing with Scandinavian tongue-twisters like Stuhlsted and Thingvold -- but Gontjes, Vander Ploeg, and Imwiehe left me flabbergasted.  My hubris initially did not allow me to ask for help in pronouncing these alphabetically-challenged surnames (after all, I was a graduate of the prestigious Brown College of Broadcasting up in Minneapolis, Minnesota!)  But after the first dozen irate phone calls from the next of kin, demanding to know why I was making fun of the deceased, I humbly began seeking help.  The office secretary was usually a local gal, so she often knew how to pronounce the names.  But even she would get stumped once in a while, glancing at the name on the glossy fax sheet and shaking her flaxen mane in bewilderment.  Then I would have to call the funeral home to see if they knew how to pronounce it.  Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t.  If they didn’t there was nothing for it but to track down the pastor or priest who was to give the eulogy and ask them, for heaven’s sake, how do you pronounce “Baughfman”?

Then there was the great Kneen controversy.  This was a large, spread-out, long-established family, so members were going to meet their maker on a regular basis.  The problem was that some of the family pronounced the name “Keen”, and some of them pronounced it “Kaneen”.  Inevitably, if I said “Keen” on the air, it was supposed to be “Kaneen”, and vice versa.  And in what kind of world does a man go around with the last name of Caauwe?  I honestly and sincerely wanted to get the names right, since this would probably be the last time they would be pronounced in full, besides at the funeral, this side of eternity.  Every human being deserves at least that much respect.

I’m happy to say that as time went by I picked up a smattering of knowledge on Dutch surnames – I even took the trouble to look up the use and pronunciation of tussenvoegsels at the local library in Sheldon (and if you want to know what that is you can go look it up yourself!)  And so my frantic calls to the funeral home became fewer and fewer, and my flubs became fewer and fewer.  But then, one fatal day, I read the obituary of a person with the last name of Snuttjer (it’s pronounced “Snooter”).  I pronounced it correctly, but it struck me as just plain funny.  I came down with an attack of the giggles on the air.  After that I had to be careful, to think really sad thoughts as I read the names of the departed, so I would not desecrate them with a belly laugh.  I met my Waterloo when I had to do the sports one day.  I scanned the script hastily before going on the air, too hastily – since halfway through I read the following:  “The Red Raiders at Northwestern University in Orange City have made two selections so far; Donkersloot and Boogert . . . “

The Program Director rushed in to finish the broadcast for me, as I slid helplessly to the floor, choking on my stifled guffaws.