Charles W. Chesnutt to Radio Station WTAM, 22 June 1931
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June 22, 1931
Radio Station WTAM,
Auditorium Garage Bldg.,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Gentlemen:
I wish to thank you for your kindly mention of and good wishes for my birthday in your "Cheerio" program1 on June 20th.2
Your programs are always interesting, and this one, of course, was especially so.
Cordially yours, CWC:ESCorrespondent: The Cleveland AM radio station WTAM was founded in 1923. By 1930, WTAM had moved to Cleveland's Auditorium Building and became part of the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC); its signal reached from the Rocky Mountains to the East coast.
1. "Cheerio" was a popular weekday morning program on NBC radio stations nationwide, hosted by White journalist and poet Charles Kellogg Field (1873–1948) from 1927 until 1943. In 1930 and 1931, it briefly included a segment sponsored by the Arco Publishing Company that honored writers and composers on their birthdays, including Chesnutt. [back]
2. Chesnutt's birthday was June 20, 1858. Several other birthdays and anniversaries in the family also fell in June (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 263, 302), followed by summer vacations in July and August; as a result, Chesnutt's replies to summer mail were often delayed. [back]
