NBC Transmitter (Jan-Dec 1938)

16 NBC TRANSMITTER The NBC Transmitter salutes these members of the National Broadcasting Company who, this month, complete their tenth year of continuous service with the Company. That radio does not always have to draw from other fields for capable men to steer its ship through its ever changing path is exemplified in the person of I. E. Showerman who completeshis tenth year with NBC this month. Coming from NBC Chicago where he was assistant sales manager until 1936, Mr. Showerman is now assistant manager of the Sales Department in the Eastern Division. He was born in Port Huron, Michigan. He received his early education in the West. In 1917 the War interrupted his schooling when he enlisted in the Army. Mr. Showerman served with the 15th Field Artillery of the Second Division whose one-time commander was General James G. Harbord, chairman of the Board of Directors of RCA. He was overseas nineteen months and participated in five major engagements. At Verdun he was in charge of the wireless station which maintained liaison between the airplane observers and his artillery battalion. A member of the Veteran Wireless Operators Association, Mr. Showerman is a descendant of Army communications men. His father was a military telegrapher in the Spanish-American War and his grandfather was in the signal corps of the Union Army during the Civil War. After the War, he finished his scholastic education at the University of Illinois where he majored in journalism. There he became a member of Chi Psi and Sigma Delta Chi, journalism fraternity. From college he went to Chicago to work for an advertising agency and, later, for the Chicago Herald & Examiner from which he resigned in 1928 to join the newly organized staff of the NBC branch in the Windy City. Mr. Showerman is married, has a sixyear-old son, Peter, and has a home in Tuckahoe, N. Y. His hobbies are golf and writing. He confesses that his writing to date has produced nothing but rejection slips. Mary Coyne Mary Coyne, gracious secretary to E. P. H. James, manager of Sales Promotion, is a native of Flushing, Long Island. She attended the public schools there and upon graduation from Flushing High School, she went to work for a local firm. Six months later she entered NBC and was assigned to the Sales Department. In those days work was not as specialized as it is today. Miss Coyne’s activities ranged from showing clients through the studios to typing scripts. Looking back. Miss Coyne said, “You had to be an all-round person then.” In 1934 she was appointed to her present position. She spends her spare time designing and making her own clothes. Her favorite indoor sport is broiling twoinch steaks. She is a member of the Athletic Association’s badminton group and as we go to press she is preparing to make her first flight as a member of the newly organized Radio Flying Club, an independent organization, the membership of which is composed principally of NBCites. Alexander Haas Alexander Haas has been associated with NBC Artists Service in New York since it was known as Artists Bureau ten years ago. At that time the department had been formed to keep tabs on the various NBC radio artists who were giving concerts throughout the country, in order to ascertain their whereabouts for future bookings. Since then the department has developed many and widely diversified interests in almost every field of entertainment, not the least of which is Mr. Haas’ own task of preparing bookings from Birmingham, Alabama, to Vancouver, B. C., for NBC concert artists. The artists who have been represented by him run the gamut of talent in the concert world. Chaliapin, Pavlowa, Schumann-Heink. Elman, Jeritza, Alma Gluck and Flag Alexander Haas stad, to mention a few. have had their itineraries prepared and supervised by Mr. Haas. His most recent trip this Spring, took him to various universities in the South which are going to book Artists Service talent during the 1938-39 season. “Business is definitely picking up for our type of work despite the recession,” states Mr. Haas. “Our concert bookings grossed $1,200,000 for the last calendar year, an increase of twenty per cent over the previous year.” Mr. Haas was born in New Milford, New Jersey, and at the age of four was sent abroad to receive his education. He came back to America when he was fourteen and had to learn to speak English all over again, having lost his native tongue in Europe. He was graduated from high school and then attended New York University. His first business position was that of secretary to a Wall Street banker. From there he went to the New York Symphony Orchestra as assistant to George Engles, the manager, and while engaged in this new position met Walter Damrosch. When the New York Symphony Orchestra was amalgamated with the Philharmonic Orchestra, Mr. Haas went with Mr. Engles to NBC. Mr. Engles is now a vice-president of NBC, and director of Artists Service; Dr. Damrosch is NBC Musical Counsel and Mr. Haas is in charge of the Southwest and Pacific Coast territories in the Concert Division. Mr. Haas is married and the father of two children — a girl, who is a junior at the University of Michigan, and a boy in high school. His home is in Tuckahoe, in Westchester County, New York. Clifford F. Rothery Clifford Rothery is new to the NBC engineering staff in San Francisco but May 1 starts his eleventh year with NBC. Most of the ten years he has spent in the company were in Washington, D.C., where he began his radio career at NBC Station WRC in 1928. Before that however he had four years in the United States Navy and a year as reporter on the W ashington Times. Radio had been his hobby all along, and he was an upand-coming, if v-ery youthful, radio amateur when the World War came along and forced all the “hams” of that day off the air temporarily. I. E. Showerman I. E. Showerman Mary Coyne C. F. Rothery