Broadcaster Ray David passes away in North Dakota

Ray David (1925-2014)

Ray David has died.  The 88-year-old combat veteran of World War II passed away last Tuesday (9/30/14) in Minot, North Dakota, where he had been living in recent months as his health declined.

Many residents of Wyoming, Nebraska and the Dakotas will remember the tall and handsome Ray David and his beautiful wife, Shirley.  In Nebraska,  Ray first arrived in Chadron to take over as manager of the old Pace Theatre (now The Eagle) in the mid-1950's.  Most of his professional years were spent in North Dakota.

Although his years in Nebraska were few, Ray David went on to a successful career in broadcasting and politics.  But what’s really remarkable is how this humble but creative kid, born into an impoverished Kansas farm family  and raised in the Oklahoma panhandle and western Colorado, would pursue life with a passion and fight his way to success.

Dropping out of school after the 8th grade, Ray worked at a variety of jobs in Oklahoma and Colorado, before taking off to California and a short stint as a machinist’s helper in the Mare Island Shipyard at age 16.   By then, World War II was in full swing, and Mare Island was abuzz with ship construction and repairs.  Alas, California law required a waiver from Ray’s parents in order for him to maintain his job – but since his parents lived in Colorado, they could not sign the waiver.

But they could and did later sign a letter approving his underage entry into the Army Air Corps, where he could serve his country and be close to one of his loves – aviation.  But the Army, being the Army, had other ideas, and he ended up in the infantry and was part of the D-Day invasion of coastal France in June 1944.

 

Most remarkable about his story is the fact that Ray David – wounded both in France on D-Day and six months later at the Battle of the Bulge – could later be so candid about the anguish of losing friends and his own struggles while battling the demons of war,

Many years later, Ray wrote about the war-time experience of meeting up with his old buddy Jack Harp while on sentry duty in the heavily wooded hills on the eastern edge of the Ardennes Forest.

Ray David (right) with a World War II buddy.

“The enemy was on top of us before we knew what was going on.  Jack alerted his Company Headquarters on the field phone.  When all the heavy fire power started coming in, Jack was hit in the shoulder and chest.  In agony and pain he jumped up to get back to the medic at his CQ.  He was hit by shrapnel from a phosphate shell; it hit him in the right side of his face and neck,  The burn and wound had to have been excruciating.  Poor Jack tore my field jacket from my shoulder, as I held him trying to apply sulfur power in his wounds and give him a shot of morphine from his medical kit.  All the while he screamed for help from his mother, God, and the medics.  Within a few minutes, he was gone.  I was stunned, absolutely stunned.  I had witnessed other similar situations, but Jack was like a brother.

The next few days were a blank.  I don’t believe anyone can fully grasp the horror and the awful feeling, without actually being in the midst of fear, confusion and the loss of mental focus as the screams, moans and begging for help fill the air leaving an indelible scar on your memory.”

Although he survived the war, Ray David's personal life was turned upside down. His wartime  experiences and traumas resulted in electric shock and insulin treatments and “Ice Baths.” Ray’s candor and honesty as he wrote about these incidents in later years is truly moving.

But he pieced his life together into a successful career.  His years with the Black Hills Amusement Company led to a variety of jobs in Rapid City, Newcastle, Hot Springs, and Chadron, where he managed the Pace Theatre and the Starlite Drive-in.  During these years, he married Shirley Wilcox of Hot Springs.

Vehicle for promoting the Starlite Drive-in

  

In Chadron during the mid-to-late 1950's, Ray became extremely active in promoting the community, helping re-arrange the 9-hole golf course at the Country Club, raising money for the college, and volunteering to do promotional work for the International Parks Highway 385-85.   A few folks may remember Ray sitting atop a 50-foot pole for 11 days to raise money for a new wing at the old Chadron Memorial Hospital.

But his many successes led Ray David away from Chadron to Williston, North Dakota, where he went to work for the Chamber of Commerce for a while.  Then he started a 16-year-career in broadcasting with KEYZ in Williston, which led to ownership of stations in Dickinson as well.  He would later serve on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Broadcasters.  His broadcast ownership allowed him to expand the scope and depth of community promotion. 

Despite his lack of a formal education, Ray also served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of North Dakota-Willison, where he taught Public Speaking and Public Relations.  He served two productive terms as a State Senator in the North Dakota Legislature. 

We had the pleasure of getting reacquainted with Ray David in recent years, exchanging e-mails and sharing stories about broadcasting and Chadron in sometimes rather lengthy telephone calls.  His was a truly remarkable life.

America's "Voice

Despite intense jamming by the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, and unabashed political assaults within the U.S. government over the years, the Voice of America has survived.

Alas, while the broadcasting service is a mere shadow of its former self, VOA continues to span the globe in 45 languages, reaching an audience that they estimate at about 130 million people every week. To serve that audience, VOA uses shortwave, FM, medium wave AM broadcasts, the Internet, and television.

Long-time international broadcaster Alan Heil, Jr., who toiled in the vineyards of VOA from 1962 until 1998, has written Voice of America – A History, and it’s a masterful history of an important American institution. While little known within U.S. borders because of the Smith-Mundt Act (yep, that’s South Dakota’s own Karl Mundt), the Voice of American has been a beacon of information and hope for millions of people around the world since it was created in 1942.

The Heil book introduces us to VOA by providing a fascinating narrative about its role in providing news and information to some 60 million Chinese during the tumultuous 1989 uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The VOA delivered news that the Chinese citizens couldn’t get from their own government. It’s a compelling story that hooks the reader right away.

Then Heil escorts readers back to the origin of the VOA in 1942, when its first broadcasts in German pledged to listeners in Europe, “We bring you voices from America. Today, and daily from now on, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good for us. The news may be bad. But we shall tell you the truth.”

And that has been a guiding light for VOA for nearly seven decades.

Heil sorts out the continuing struggle to “get it straight” during the early journalistic years of VOA. He provides insightful stories of correspondents doing their jobs from Cairo and Beijing to Munich and Moscow. He adds some touching stories about the many talented immigrants who escaped from dire political and economic circumstances to find a home at the Voice of America. There’s an inside look at the abiding struggle for a VOA charter and independence – a firewall from political influence.

While the bulk of the book focuses upon news and information services at VOA, Heil also pays tribute to the value of music and cultural programs. He acknowledges the plight of many VOA broadcasters: they are well known around the world, but unknown at home. The late Willis Conover (at right), long-time producer and host of “Music USA” jazz programs was a real celebrity around the globe, but virtually unknown in the United States.

Alan Heil's book takes the reader right up to the turn of the century (it was published in 2003). It’s extremely well documented, but it reads every bit as easily as a good novel. Alas, its final chapter, “Conclusion,” leaves the reader with some anxiety about the future of VOA.

And rightfully so.

By 2010, we find a complicated menagerie of bureaucracies – each pitted against the other – fighting for missions and funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). It’s the 9-member BBG that tries to oversee not only the Voice of America, but a group of so-called “surrogate” broadcasters – also funded by U.S. taxpayers. English and many foreign language broadcasts have been chopped from the VOA schedule. Some of those foreign broadcasts, like Arabic, were moved to the surrogate agencies: Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Radio and TV Marti broadcasts to Cuba in Spanish.

As nearly as we can tell, the BBG has allowed itself to be mired in day-to-day operations, rather than focusing upon policy and planning. Some of the services seem bent on luring only a young audience, thus we find a real dominance of music and youth-oriented programming – at the expense of news and information programming.

We were taken by a quotation Heil offered by our former public broadcasting colleague and one-time VOA Director, Mary Bitterman, who said, “It is not the organizational structure which permits creativity and integrity, but the character of the people involved in oversight.”

Alan Heil’s book offers a rare glimpse of both the organizational structures – and the people – who have shaped the Voice of America.

America at a Crossroads

(Originally posted April 5, 2007)

Public broadcasting has always had a slight tilt to the left, but it remains the best U.S. broadcast news service available. While the BBC has lost ground, its international coverage is second to none. I spend most of my broadcast listening time with National Public Radio, but I'm about to invest a significant block of time watching "America at a Crossroads" on PBS later this month.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times dedicated most of its Television page on April Fools Day to PBS. And this time it's worth the ink. Reporter Elizabeth Jensen outlined the forthcoming bloc of independent documentaries that will likely range from the far left to the "neo-conservative" right. PBS has dubbed the twelver hours of diverse views "America at a Crossroads," and just which way she will go we can't be certain.

We can, however, take solace in the fact that this series of programs will be tied together by the thoughtful introductions of Robert MacNeil, long-time journalist with PBS and the BBC. It's hard to believe that MacNeil would risk his well-earned credibility becoming associated with a project without merit. His participation -- for many of us -- is a testament to the quality of the project.

Not that we'll all like everything we see and hear. More likely, it will offend those with extreme views on both sides, who will then try to enliven the perennial question regarding federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Jensen reports that the concept of "Crossroads" emanated at CPB, which plowed $20 million into helping make the concept a meaningful reality.

Viewers with strong opinions on the war in Iraq will find much fodder for debate in this six-day series. Let's hope they find merit in diverse examinations of the war, Islam, and the sharpening conflict between national security and personal liberties.

And let's hope they're more tolerant than John Schidlovsky, an outside adviser to the "Crossroads" project. Founding director of the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University, Schidlovsky resigned as an adviser, apparently because a "neo-conservative" film featuring former Bush advisor Richard Perle was given the green light for broadcast on "Crossroads." Never mind that it's just one of numerous perspectives to be aired.

The anticipated diverse content of "America at a Crossroads" is the kind of thing that we seldom find anywhere on television.....except at PBS. The first broadcast will be Sunday evening, April 15th. Kudos to CPB and PBS for taking on what will undoubtedly cause a stir along the Potomac.