HomeMy WebLinkAboutPride of Hope Ben Downs Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD
WTAW Radio
Ben Downs |The Pride of Hope, Arkansas, Former WTAW General Manager
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Laura Quezada | Transcriber
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947, Dick Bolin talking. Here's the latest news from the
Associated Press…
[Unintelligible news broadcaster speaking]
00:00:07 Speaker 2
Aggies win 74-72! Here's your…
00:00:12 Speaker 3
…1620 WTAW.
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00:00:20 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the First 100 Years, I'm Tom Turbiville. WTAW General Manager Ben Downs
has been generating headlines for this station since he was a senior at Texas A&M, not just local
headlines. The August 7th, 1975, edition of the Hope, Arkansas Star shouts out the headline,
“Ben Downs accepts award from the Boys Club”. Yep, it was a local boy. Makes good kind of
article because you see, Ben was born on a farm outside of Hope and was an honor student at
Hope High School; valedictorian, actually. But the article talks about how Ben, then an Aggie
senior, had helped the station win the Boys Club of America Media Award for raising $12,000 in
a bike-a-thon when 400 riders raised the money by pedaling 30 miles . The article also talks about
how Ben Downs had headed up a country western dance that helped St. Joseph Hospital buy an
incubator for premature babies. So WTAW and some other civic organizations in town threw a
dinner for Ben to say thanks. That's pretty good stuff from a part-time WTAW jock and an Aggie
senior and making the home folks of Hope mighty proud. Now, 47 years later, still here, sitting
behind the manager's desk now of WTAW, the First 100 Years.