 Welcome to Signal Hill, Mr. President, Governors Branstad and Thompson, Congressman Leach, Mayor Hart, and friends. During this year of WOC's 65th anniversary of fine broadcasting, it is fitting that we gather here today for the dedication of the new Signal Hill Communications Center with play-off like high-top brick-street hill indicating the weather for the day, such as S for snow, F for fair, R for rain, and so on. People refer to this as Signal Hill. Today, of course, we have a new Signal Hill communications service to this community remains the same. The changes which have taken place from WOC's humble beginnings at Palmer School to its current state-of-the-art operations are obvious, but some of the occurrences during WOC's early history are difficult to compete with. For instance, the foresight of our program manager, Peter McArthur, to hire a talented young man just out of college named Dutch Reagan as our sportscaster and radio announcer. I know if Mr. McArthur and my father, Dave Palmer, could be with us today, this would be their proudest hour. It is indeed my great honor to welcome back to WOC our most famous alumnus, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the President of the United States. Vicki, first let me say I'm delighted to be back here with all of you, perhaps some of you know about a huge favor that I owe a lady from Chicago. It was back in 1932, I had just gotten out of college and this was in the depths of the depression and you didn't think about career right then or what you might want to do in the long haul, you just thought about is there any way to get a job with 26% unemployment rate and Montgomery Ward had just moved into Dixon, Illinois and they were going to have a sports department and they thought they'd get someone who had a background of high school sports there, so I went down. I didn't get hired there but the young lady that I mentioned, a sportscaster, that's what I wanted to do and this young lady that was happened to be in the program department, I guess maybe saw that I was very discouraged and thought maybe I'm setting my sights too high and she assured me that no I hadn't, but she said you've come to the wrong place, you must go to the smaller towns and the smaller stations where they can afford to take on a newcomer and someone without an experience and give them the experience. Well it was a long hitchhike back to Dixon, Illinois that night, by the way for the last 30 mile stretch I got a ride with a fellow who told me quite unnecessarily that he'd been out trapping skunks, but the following Monday I took her advice and my first stop was here in Davenport, whereas we used to say in those days the West begins and where the tall corn grows and I went in for an interview with the program director Peter MacArthur, he had come to this country with Harry Louder, a great vaudevillian in a vaudeville act and wound up as the program director and no there was nothing here in an announcer, so now I'm really upset and as I'm going out the door I said how does a fellow ever get to be a sports announcer if he can't get a job in radio and I got to the elevator and fortunately it wasn't there because I heard a thumping down the hall, Pete had arthritis very severely and walked on two cane or with two canes and he kept calling me and rather profanely and finally I realized but he was coming after me so I waited and he asked me what was that that I said about sports and I said well that's what I'd like to be as a sports announcer he said what do you know about football and I said I played at eight years he said can you tell me about a football game and if I'm listening to it on radio then I'll be able to see that game and I said I think so he took me into a studio those original studio stood me up in front of a microphone pointed to a red bulb up on the wall and he said I won't be in here with you you'll be alone when that red light goes on you start broadcasting an imaginary football game well there I stood and I was all alone and I thought what am I going to do for names and then I said wait a minute one of our games in the previous season when I was playing we won in the last 20 seconds with a 65-yard touchdown run by our quarterback and I said well I know a lot of the other teams names and I know all of our teams names I'll start with the fourth quarter so when it came on I said the long blue shadows are settling over the field there's a chill wind blowing in through the end of the stadium we didn't have a stadium we only had bleachers and then I took us for as long as I could go up to the point that there we were and called that play with 20 seconds to go and the winning touchdown is scored at which point I grabbed the microphone and so that's all incidentally I probably I personally take credit for the first instant replay because on that famous play I was the key blocker of the first man in the secondary and I missed my man I don't know to this day how bud Cole scored that touchdown but in that broadcast I delivered a block that was just earth shattering well Pete came back in and he said be here Saturday we'll give you $5 in bus fare you're broadcasting the Iowa Minnesota game so I was there Saturday over to Iowa City we went and then I found out that one of his experienced staff announcers he had a loan for safety's sake and had agreed that we would alternate quarters and he would do I would do a quarter and so forth and I guess that was for protection case I my imagination couldn't but I'll never forget this real when we were coming up it was good so for that he told me that they had four more games left in the season for broadcasting and I was gonna get $10 a game and bus fare then I had to wait a few months before after the games were over before there was a vacancy and then I was if I went on and you know I'm proud to have gotten my start in communications here at WOC but I'm even prouder to have been a part of a tremendous broadcasting tradition one that is 65 years old this year and I think all of you can be proud not just of this new building but of all that represents serving the people of the Quad Cities for more than six decades when I first came here was only the tri-cities we were in the midst of the depression and today we're in the middle of an economic boom though we must get some help to the farmers who've been hurt by the drought but through good times and bad WOC has been there for the people of Iowa and Illinois you've established high standards of service to the community and it's my hope that those standards will remain as much a part of your tradition as they have been in the past things have changed a bit since 1932 but in a funny way the business stays the same news sports weather information it's a good way to make a living and a good way of serving others so my congratulations to all of you and my warmest wishes for your future success I want to say one more word about farmers that I said earlier today over in Illinois once when I was just out of the mash potato circuit before I ever had this job I was invited to address the Farm Bureau national meeting at Las Vegas, Nevada and on the way to the hall where they were holding their convention some fellow recognized me I spoke from the picture days and said ask me what I was doing in Las Vegas and I told him I was there to speak to the Farm Bureau and he said what's a bunch of farmers doing in Las Vegas and I couldn't resist I said Buster they're in an occupation that makes it Las Vegas crap table look like a guaranteed annual income and it's true our farmers deserve all the help we can give them and we're going to give them that that help there now but thank you all God bless you all I'd like to hand you this photograph who that fellow was we thought we'd give you your own copy to commemorate your days you spent here at WOC and thank you very much for being here today well thank you very much it's a photographic trick I was never that young thank you very much thank you all would you please join me and we'll take you up to the broadcast studio all right audition when he heard sports announcing was an idea of mine that he stood me in front of a microphone when the light came on start broadcasting an imaginary football game I did for about 15 minutes when I came back you want to go play with the dollars and bus there you go so the game I believe they had the flight of Rosedale trophy at that time since come up with this pig they the winner of the game at that time I noticed in your book you said you were hired fired and rehired at WOC well yes then after the several football games that I broadcast were over there was no place regularly for me but they said they thought they there would be and so I went home and I waited until February before I got a call that there wasn't an announcer who on the side would handle sporting events and I came here and one night I feature in which we use the mortuaries organ for they got a kind of a commercial body in their organ but anyway there had been a man that they had been talking to and offering a job to for some time before and he came here and I was told that I was I was out but he came well when he found out that he had thought that there was an actual vacancy and when he found out that no I was leaving he insisted on a contract to guarantee that yes and they wouldn't do it and so they came to me and told me I was un-fired Friday we've had a very good luck of having a couple of rings moon rigging your brother yeah I believe came to work here I don't remember I think he was program director for a time yes yes and then he left the actual broadcasting business to become a vice president of McCann Eric's and advertising agency but yes he had he graduated from college a year after me he's my older brother but in the roaring 20s when he got out of high school I was before the crash everybody seemed the job seemed to be so good that never mind college but when I made it for one year working my way through he decided that well maybe he'd like to do that too and so having played on a championship high school team between myself and the coach who we managed to find a job for him on the campus and he came to college so I became the older brother and I was the sophomore and he was the freshman but then when he got out of school he came over to see me and I ended up getting him some things to do the 30s you know have given us a lot of the programming ideas that we still use today perhaps the most important decade I think you did a football prediction type show in between records more or less invented that or the first time it was done in Des Moines at any rate and yes joined it on that yes as a matter of fact that's how it started that they then gave him something to do he was in the studio and when I was making my predictions on Friday night for the Saturday games now they were going to come out I'd see him shaking his head that I was wrong on one and he was sitting in front of a microphone as you are opposite me just visiting and doing it and I said my brother's here with me and he seems to disagree with that and I asked him I said well who and why do you think that such and such a team is going to win well we finished the program with a conversation between us and then Peter McArthur very generously knowing that he was out of school and out of work gave him a fee for and we turned over the football predictions to him and the scores you did a lot of baseball games a lot of our listeners don't have any idea of doing a baseball game from a ticker tape but you did hundreds yes games here in the Des Moines I think yeah one of the best stories is the poor fellow that was up to hitting all the foul balls well yes I had an operator on the other side of the window and he had the earphones on and was getting the Morse code from the ballpark and with the typewriter he would tap off what the play was send it through to me and I would well it had come have to come through pretty worked down for example he'd hand me a slip of paper that said S1C can't sell any Wheaties saying S1C so I would say Dean comes out of the wind up here comes the pitch and it's a call strike breaking over the corner to a batter and so forth and in this particular day it was night thinning tied up between the Cubs and Cards and Billy Jurgus at bat and I saw Curly typing so I waited and he starts shaking his head and I thought it must be some sensational play but when the slip came to me it says the wires gone dead well in those days there weren't one there wasn't one fellow broadcasting game that there are today the there were a dozen stations doing the same game and I knew that if I said we've got to play a musical interlude I'd lose lose the audience so I had and I had when he handed me this I had a ball in the way to the plate so I had Jurgus foul it off and then I looked back and he just shrugged and so I thought well that's one thing doesn't get in the scorecard so I took a chance and I had Billy foul off another one then he fouled one that only missed being a home run by a foot and then he I described the two kids over behind third that got in a fight over the ball that the foul ball that had gone in the stands and I was having Dean pitch very slowly he was rubbing the rosin bag all the time and shaking off signs and pretty soon I'm really beginning to sweat because I think now if I tell him they'll know that I've been stalling here that this hasn't been true and just then Curly started typing and when he handed me the slip of paper I could hardly broadcast for giggling said Jurgus popped out in the first ball pitched but you know there was no record of such a thing but for days I'd meet people in the street who'd stop me and say is there any record of anyone ever hitting that many successive foul balls and I'd say it was quite a few but I don't think there is a little bit about the drought you've been through southern Illinois and it looks pretty bad down there what's what are what are your plans I don't want to steal your thunder from the upcoming well right now that's on the floor in in in the Congress and we really have a bipartisan group together and Secretary Ling who's with me here our Secretary of Agriculture has been working on this and been working with the people on the hill and there it's a it's a program that is not going to invade and try to rewrite the farm legislation as it is but is to provide for help emergency help to these farmers who are so beset by this drought all over the United States the figures are astonishing and what I saw down there in Illinois just shows that it is disaster and so I think I think we're coming up with a program that will have bipartisan support right now I'm a little edgy as I told some of our press on this trip that you know there are always some legislators that will have a favorite thing that they know they can't get passed by itself and they will try to attach it to a sure thing bill like this as an amendment and some of that's been going on too and I hope that we're successful in stopping that and getting to the business at hand how long do you think to turn this around and get something signed well I think I I think it's a very limited time they they know that there's a there's a time pressure on it and I think it's it's ready to go through and of course I'll sign at the minute it's delivered to me well speaking of time the clock on the wall says we've just about run out of time I on behalf of the staff and management of WOC kick stations we really are delighted that you could be here with us we appreciate it well I'm very pleased to have been here too and I know what it means about getting off on time so I'll try to be I've usually been I'm used to being on the side of the table that you're on asking the questions for next year I thank you I thank you very much president of the United States Ronald Reagan