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WICC's FIRST CHIEF ENGINEER, RAYMOND GRISWOLD

I would like to express my deepest thanks to Bob Griswold, son of WICC's first Chief Engineer. Bob contacted WICC with an E-Mail containing some excellent historical background of this station. He supplied WICC with the following photographs, and the story about his dad. This is a rare find, and I think we are pretty lucky to have Bob make this material available for all of us to share.

"My father, Raymond, was born and brought up in Providence, RI and he became interested in radio soon after or during World War I. He was a radio operator in Providence. "My grandmother talked of almost throwing my father out of the house on Webster Avenue in Providence because he ran an early radio station from his bedroom, and as there was no pre-recorded music, the seven piece band in the bedroom on Sunday evenings proved to be too much.	"My dad worked with/for Charles W. Selen as his operator. They apparently started stations together, got a listening public, then sold out to locals and moved to another location. "My father met my mother while installing the station in the Bridgeport Area. He was trying to get local clearance to put up the transmitting towers in the Sport Hill area (Stepney, Easton?). There was local opposition as there was a fear the electricity would make the cows sterile. My father had met Celestine Piccot, my mother, I believe they met in Bridgeport when she introduced him to a farmer in Stepney (Stepney Road?). My grandfather became convinced there was no danger to the cows, he convinced others, the towers went up on Sport Hill. They were married in Bridgeport on January 14, 1928 and lived in the cinderblock transmitting building on Sport Hill. "Raymond left the radio industry a few short years later to enter the talking movie industry in New York where he worked for Paramount, RCA and then an independent studio as an audio engineer. My dad died in 1973, and my mom is still living in Florida, age 95. "I still have a pair of the original transmitting tubes from the station, and an impedance meter." BOB GRISWOLD PLAINVILLE, MA.
Raymond Griswold in a Providence, RI station, undated.
Believed to be the WICC studios in this undated photo. Bob has the impedance meter, shown to the right of the microphone. The picture was processed by Corbit Studios, Golden Hill Street, supporting the WICC theory.
The crew of WCWS. Ray Griswold is standing to the left of the microphone as we face it. From 1927.

Copyright 2007 WICC AM 600 Radio
Offices: 2 Lafayette Square, Bridgeport, CT. 06604-6000
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