HAWAI'I WAYS, HAWAI'I DAYS
KPOI DJ shenanigans kept Manoa girl tuned in
By Glenda Chung Hinchey
Special to The Advertiser
"Open the door!" shouted Uncle Tom Moffatt, banging the door to the KPOI radio studio.
Listening to the radio, I waited breathlessly for obnoxious Ron Jacob's response. His early morning shift as disc jockey was over, but he had locked Uncle Tom out of his "cabin," for what reason, I didn't know. Would we have to listen to Ron for another shift?
This was the sort of melodrama on the radio that intrigued me as an adolescent back in the 1950s and early 1960s. Although I lived in a nice house in Manoa Valley, my parents were very frugal, having to raise five children, and we had no TV or stereo to entertain us. I didn't fly to the Mainland until after college, so you can imagine how provincial and parochial my life was back then.
It was thrilling to listen to the KPOI DJs as they indeed put "poi-sonality" back into radio. I thought Ron Jacobs was mean, Uncle Tom Moffatt was kind, and George West was sexy. I was so taken that I wrote a letter to Uncle Tom describing how I felt about them. A few days later, I turned on the radio and, to my shock, heard Uncle Tom reading my letter, which I had signed as "Terry Silva." Why I chose a Portuguese pseudonym for a Korean girl is beyond me, but in those days, I was too shy to call attention to myself.
When I won a pen in a KPOI contest and was told to pick it up at the station, I was ecstatic. Nervously, I memorized what I would say to the DJs, who I just knew would all be there to greet me. I could hardly wait. To my crushing disappointment, all I saw at the station was a receptionist, who casually gave me the pen.
I remember eagerly going to the old Civic Auditorium for concerts emceed by Uncle Tom, the sleepless marathon by DJ Tom Rounds, and the vendetta against Ricky Nelson. Oh, KPOI radio was so exciting! I couldn't imagine life without it.
Then, I grew up.
Although pop and rock music was all I had heard previously, the violin my parents bought me in the seventh grade gradually took me in another direction, to classical music.
Playing in a string orchestra at Roosevelt High School, I wept at the sheer beauty of Mozart's compositions. I turned the radio dial to a classical music station and heard the ineffable sweetness of Beethoven's violin concerto for the first time, tears rolling down my cheeks. As a 10th-grader, I was awarded a partial scholarship for private violin lessons.
During my junior year at Roosevelt, my journalism class attended the dress rehearsal of Puccini's "La Boheme" at McKinley High School Auditorium, long before there was a Blaisdell Concert Hall. It was my first opera. How could music be so lush, so expressive, and so heart wrenching? The music and DJs of KPOI took second place.
Decades later, I realize I have come a long way since those days of rapture, listening to KPOI and idolizing its DJs, closely following their zany antics. Now, it takes more than "poi-sonality" to entice me to listen to a radio station, for there are just too many other sources of entertainment, such as the computer, TV and stereo, to be hooked on just one. I watch my husband and two daughters, and notice that they aren't hooked, either.
Glenda Chung Hinchey lives in Foster Village.
Hawai'i Ways, Hawai'i Days is a column of essays by readers on what makes Hawai'i unique. Send your article of 500-600 words to: Hawai'i Ways, Hawai'i Days, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802; e-mail islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com; or fax 525-8055. Sending a picture of yourself is optional. Articles and photos submitted to The Advertiser may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.
