Hearing Voices

Re-Imagined Radio

Re-Imagined Radio partners with the Clark County Historical Museum and samples from their Oral History Collection to share stories about living and working in Southwest Washington. Museum director Bradley Richardson says, "This collection is deep and rich with stories, each told in the voices of those who lived the experiences their stories describe. They are true stories. The dialogue is unscripted, unpolished, and absolutely compelling."

We present three stories. The first, "Living with Chief Joseph," is told by Erskin Wood. In 1893, at the age of 13, he lived with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce people in the Nespelem Valley, just north of present day Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state. Wood recounts his interesting connection to Chief Joseph, everyday life in his teepee, and his job wrangling the Chief's herd of horses. He tells about the games the young people played, and about the community singing and dancing in which he participated.

The second, "Working the SPS Railroad," is an account by Harry W. Hendricks of his experiences working for the Seattle-Portland-Spokane Railroad, 1950s-1994, during the transition from steam to diesel technologies. Hendricks, a retired conductor, recounts working on the railroad for more than fourty years. He talks about the pleasure of traveling through the Columbia River Gorge several times a week. From his enthusiastic storytelling it's obvious that Hendricks enjoyed every minute of his career with the SPS railroad.

In our third story, "The Russians Arrive," Leverett Richards, a reporter for the Clark County Sun newspaper recalls the surprise landing of a single-engine airplane at Vancouver's Pearson Airfield piloted by three Russian airmen, 20 June 1937. Two days earlier, June 18, the plane took off from an airport outside Moscow, Russia, headed for Oakland, California. The Soviet airplane and its crew, Valery Chkalov, pilot, Georgi Baidukov, relief pilot, and Alexander Belyakov, navigator and radio operator flew non-stop from Moscow, over the North Pole. After 63 hours of flying, and nearly 6,000 miles, low fuel forced them to land in Vancouver, Washington. Their landing marked the first non-stop flight from Moscow, Russia, to the United States by a single engine plane over the North Pole.

Season 10, Episode 10 Premier broadcast: 21 Nov. 2022

Written, Produced, and Hosted by John Barber

Post Production, Sound Design, Music by Marc Rose

Social Media by Regina Carol Social Media Management

Graphics by Kathy Klaus

Website: https://www.reimaginedradio.fm/episodes/hearing-voices/index.html