Letters

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

The Trinity Reporter welcomes letters related to items published in recent issues. Please send remarks to the editor at sonya.adams@trincoll.edu or Sonya Storch Adams, Office of Communications, Trinity College, 300 Summit Street, Hartford, CT 06106.

WELL DONE!

For reasons unclear, I think the 2022 edition of The Trinity Reporter was particularly good. I found the photo selections and layouts fresh and engaging and thought the story lineup (“The American dream,” “ ‘All are welcome,’ ” “Simply out of this World,” etc.) offered compelling examples of how Trinity alumni are making a difference in their communities. My thanks to the Reporter staff for a job very well done. I look forward to the next issue.

Richard Coyle ’68
Savannah, Georgia

Congratulations to you and your staff on The Trinity Reporter, a consistently great read. I particularly enjoyed the winter issue’s WRTC-FM celebration as well as its recognition of “Places of the Heart.” Go Bantams!

Brad Ketchum ’61
Brunswick, Maine

OUTSTANDING OUTERSPACE

LOVED the article [on the Outerspace Band [“Simply Out of This World,” winter 2022]. Brought back so much. Living in Maine, I’ve had the good fortune to see Outerspace every summer for the last 30 years. They were already amazing at Trinity and just get better every year. Thank you.

Jonathan Harris ’72
Auburn, Maine

BRINGING BADER TO LIFE

The Greg Bader story is wonderful, and I am thrilled to see it in print. He is an extraordinary person, and you brought him to life on the page.

Adrienne “Renny” Fulco
Associate Professor of Legal and Policy Studies

‘MARVELOUS COMBINATION’

I … thought I would write a very brief note to tell you how much I enjoyed the contents of the [spring 2021] issue. The articles were very timely and insightful with their focus on the new curriculum and its requirements, civil rights and fairness, and dance. A marvelous combination of topics.

Lindsay Mann ’76
Senglea, Malta

MORE ON WRTC

As a former staff member of WRTC-FM, I very much enjoyed your article marking its 75 years of service to Trinity and to the Greater Hartford community (“WRTC marks 75 years,” winter 2022). I was disappointed, however, that there was no mention of the station’s significant educational contribution to the community in the early 1960s through its groundbreaking and award-winning program Classrooms Unlimited. As I recall, the program was developed at the suggestion of and under the guidance of John Dando, then associate professor of English, who was a faculty adviser to the station and who also did radio broadcasts for WTIC in Hartford. With input and support from the West Hartford public school system, the program initially created and produced English literature lectures by Trinity professors that were broadcast directly into the classrooms of the West Hartford high schools. Each lecture lasted about 20 minutes, which gave time for class discussion following the broadcast.

Edward P. Seibert ’61, P’90, ’96
Guilford, Connecticut

Editor’s Note: Mr. Seibert also noted that Classrooms Unlimited was featured in several newspapers at the time.

During my time at WRTC-FM as program director in the early 1960s, FM radios were far from common on campus. A talented team led by the late program director Bill Richardson ’62 and advised by John Dando, the late broadcasting professional and Trinity English professor, created a platform of high-quality broadcast fully capable of extending well beyond the Trinity campus.
Classrooms Unlimited was already scoring great success and praise as a collaboration between Hartford-area high schools and Trinity faculty offering broadcasts of college-level analysis and insight on high school academic subjects.

Beyond this narrowcasting, programs were being developed to appeal both to Trinity students and audiences within the listening range. Three examples: En Passant provided weekly 30-minute virtual visits to Paris, narrated in French and enjoyed by many of the area’s large French-Canadian audience; late Sunday nights with Ross Hall ’62 featured complete opera recordings for opera lovers, famously including postal workers at the West Hartford Post Office; and lectures by campus visitors broadcasted along with dramas including The Hungarian Revolution, an original radio presentation scripted, acted, and produced by Trinity students. Other programs included original interviews with Robert Frost, Arthur Fiedler, and Eugene Ormandy.
By its second decade, WRTC-FM had moved beyond limited FM reception on campus to providing programming for the Trinity community and targeting listeners in the Greater Hartford area and beyond via some Northeastern educational and cultural radio stations.

Charles McGill ’63
North Palm Beach, Florida

I really enjoyed Kathy Andrews’s article on WRTC-FM. As with many of the people quoted, being on the station was a highlight of my Trinity years (1968–72). But I would like to point out that WRTC warrants at least a footnote in rock ’n’ roll history—the famous British band Jethro Tull [may have gotten] their first U.S. airplay there. Tull has now been around for more than 50 years, has sold millions of albums (including classics like Aqualung and Thick as a Brick), and sold millions of concert tickets worldwide.

I was lucky enough to see the then-unknown group play live in July 1968 on a trip to London and was knocked out by their performance. A couple of months later, their first album was released in the U.K. I ordered a copy, had it sent via airmail to my Trinity post office box, and played it the following Saturday night on my show London Scene.

The album got a U.S. release the following year, the band began to tour the States (including a terrific 1970 performance in the field house), and the snowball began rapidly rolling downhill. But it all started at WRTC!

Andrew Mitchell ’72
Bloomfield, Connecticut

Thank you for the feature on WRTC. I have another recollection for you.
I entered Trinity in 1954 and graduated in ’58. During that time, I was separated (except for vacations) from my high-school sweetheart, now my wife of 64 years. We wrote to each other almost every day, and many of my letters included “what they’re playing tonight on WRTC”—it was the big band era, and almost everything was a love song, the ones we had danced to in high school and/or that she had heard me play on clarinet or saxophone in a dance band. Of course, she was hearing many of the same tunes on other radio stations, first in the Philadelphia area, then in the Norfolk area. We married during spring break of my senior year, then separated for another nine weeks until I graduated.

Thank you for reminding me of that bittersweet time in my life.

David A. Smith ’58
Durham, North Carolina

Thank you for the wonderful Trinity Reporter story celebrating 75 years of Trinity College radio, 89.3 WRTC FM. We would like to acknowledge the many contributions of Professor Gary Reger, who served as WRTC faculty adviser from 1988–2019. Now retired, Gary worked as the liaison between the Trinity students, community members, and administration. He hired and supervised the WRTC general manager and chief engineer. Working with broadcast counsel, he ensured that the station was in compliance with FCC regulations, including license renewals and maintenance of public files. It is not too much to say that on more than one occasion, WRTC owes its continued existence to Gary.

Throughout his tenure, Gary encouraged the Trinity students to lead, and he never interfered with programming, although he did host a rock show for a period of time. The WRTC faculty adviser toils behind the scenes, and his contributions are often unnoticed. We wish to explicitly express the appreciation of the WRTC students and staff for Gary’s hard work for over three decades keeping the station going and allowing WRTC to reach its 75th anniversary.

Joe Palladino, Chairman and Professor of Engineering and WRTC Faculty Adviser
WRTC Student Executive Board Members
Katie Cerulle ’22, Secretary
Alex Chambers ’22, Co-Station Manager
Amelia Huba ’22, Music Director
Maura Keary ’22, Co-Station Manager and Business Manager
Taive Muenzberg ’23, Programming Director
Chris Cowles, General Manager
John Schwenk, Chief Engineer

CALL FOR PUBLICATIONS

If you have a book, CD, or video that you would like listed in an upcoming issue of The Trinity Reporter, please submit a copy to Sonya Storch Adams, Office of Communications, Trinity College, 300 Summit Street, Hartford, CT 06106. Questions? Email sonya.adams@trincoll.edu.