NBC Transmitter (Jan-Dec 1938)

12 NBC TRANSMITTER The NBC Transmitter salutes these members of the National Broadcasting Company who, this month, complete their tenth year with the Company. William R. McMillin In 1928, when radio was still a wayward and temperamental child, few nurses had the training or experience to care properly for her. William R. McMillin, when he joined NBC as a radio operator at Station WJZ, Bound Brook, N. J., in that year, was one of the qualified few. He was a graduate of the Capital Radio EnWashington, D. C., Radio Schools, and W. R. McMillin gineers Institute in three U. S. Naval our Coast Guard Radio School. Furthermore, he had seen active service as radioman in the U. S. Navy from 1921 to 1926, and in the Coast Guard from 1926 to 1928. After his job at Bound Brook, Mr. McMillin worked steadily with the Radio Facilities Group, New York City, helping to make the slow painstaking advances against undelineable factors that so plague the vanguard of radio engineering achievement. Much of his work with the Radio Facilities Group takes him to other stations in the NBC networks. He recently returned from Washington, D. C., where he spent several weeks conducting field intensity tests and other work for NBC. Mr. McMillin’s home is in Middlesex Borough, N. J., where he has lived for the past ten years. He is married, and has three boys, William R., Jr., aged eight, Thomas Leslie, three, and James Robert, one. Besides his work at NBC, Mr. McMillin’s interests have thrust him pretty squarely into the tide of Middlesex Borough public activities. He has been Democratic County Committeeman, a member of the Beechwood Heights Fire Company, serving as secretary and assistant engineer and as driver of fire engine No. 2, and for three years was a member of the Borough Police Force with (0, Doubtful Distinction!) badge No. 13. In the last School Board Election, he was defeated by a scant 67 votes. Somehow, besides all this, he finds time to pursue with zest his hobbies of gardening, fishing, and cooking. Esther Ludwig November 15, 1928, was a momentous day for Miss Esther Ludwig in more ways than one. Not only was it her birthday, but it also was the day she was engaged as secretary in the Program Department of the National Broadcasting Company, which only a year before had opened offices in Chicago. She has worked in the Program Department ever since, and her present job is seeing that continuities are at the right place at the right time. Miss Ludwig being interested in dramatic work, tried for a script Esther Ludwig show, Keystone Chronicle, in 1929 and got the part of the ingenue in the serial drama. She was a big success and played the part for a year and a half until the show went off the air. Though she has given up radio acting, she is still continuing her vocal studies which began when she was still in high school. She was one of the outstanding participants in the Tenth Anniversary Chicago Talent Show. Miss Ludwig’s favorite sport is golf, at which she excels — in fact, she won the low gross prize at the recent NBC outing. Asked what she would do given the chance to back ten years and start all over again, Miss Ludwig replied, “I’d try to get a job at NBC if I could, as the ten years I have worked here have been interesting, exciting and happy ones.” Keith B. Williams Double congratulations are in order these days for Field Supervisor Keith B. Williams in Washington. He not only is passing his tenth milestone with NBC but is celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary simultaneously. Mr. Williams was born and raised in Washington. He started working when he was fourteen years old as an office boy with the United States Chamber of Commerce. In 1925 Mr. Williams resigned Keith B. Williams from the Chamber of Commerce to enlist in the United States Coast Guard ... so that he could learn the technical end of radio. At the end of three years the course was finished and his cruise as Radioman First Class was completed. Wishing to be a landlubber once more, Mr. Williams joined the NBC staff as control engineer in Washington. During the ten years that have passed Mr. Williams says he has jumped from control room duties, to “field,” to transmitter. He was appointed Field Supervisor in 1935. Ever since President Coolidge’s administration, Mr. Williams has been a member of the NBC presidential team. This means that virtually every radio speech that each President of the United States has made, Engineer Williams has covered, hustling along to all parts of the country to make the necessary technical broadcasting arrangements. During the present administration the Field Supervisor and other members of the presidential team have traveled with the President more than 75,000 miles. Frances Mellen Ten years ago Mrs. Frances Mellen was faced with the prospect of raising a family suddenly left without a father. Having devoted all her years as a housewife to her home and children, she had no training for any other occupation; however, she gamely sought work, and found it, as a maid at the old 711 Fifth Avenue studios of NBC. NBC has grown with the years, and today she is kept busy seeing that the client’s rooms and speaker studios are kept in order, doing odd sewing jobs that cannot wait for the tailor, and serving at the luncheons given by Mr. Lohr in the Board Room. At these gatherings she has seen the great of our world. “They always talk about business,” she comments. Maestro Toscanini surprised her. She had heard stories about his mercurial temperament, but at a luncheon, he was “as natural as any other man. He just sat there and spoke only when spoken to. You wouldn’t think that he was the greatest conductor in the world.” ( Cont . next page) Frances Mellen