Remembering Radio's Golden Age

Name of the person interviewed: Bernadine
Age: 82
How I know this person: She is my great-aunt.

For this interview, I asked my great-aunt, Bernadine, what she remembered about the “Golden Age of Radio.” I learned a lot from what she told me. Aunt Bernadine first started listening to radio around the sixth or seventh grade. This was during the Great Depression. The radio was kept in their dining room. Her family always listened to the radio when they had dinner together. She and her siblings would listen to the radio when they were doing their homework. Radio was different back then than it is today. There was a lot of static and interference. The radio Aunt Bernadine’s family owned was just a small box with an aerial outside the house. She also told me that my grandmother’s family owned a crystal radio. This radio only worked on clear days and had a lot of static. Some of Aunt Bernadine’s favorite shows on the radio were Lux Theater, Amos & Andy, and some of the soap operas. She said her mother’s favorite show was a soap opera called My Gal Sunday. This show always came on at 11:00 in the morning. There were not a lot of commercials on the radio back then. The President would go on the air and address the country. Politicians would sometimes talk and announce why people should vote for them. Sometimes big bands would perform in the evenings. Aunt Bernadine loved listening to Harry James and his orchestra. She did not remember too many moments in radio history because when she was in high school, she either had to go to work or do her homework some nights. She did say that every time she listened to the radio, it just got better and better. She would like to let the younger generations to know that in the early days of radio, it brought families closer together and it gave you your own picture of what was going on in the story being told. I learned from this interview that radio was very important during the Great Depression and World War II. It brought families together and entertained people who could not afford to go to theaters. I also learned that we take advantage of our radios today. We just flip though the stations in our cars or on our stereos and do not think of how this amazing invention made the world go round back then.