Brandeis Magazine

By Stephen Bluestone ’61

Well before WBRS started broadcasting over the airwaves (in 1968), the station operated out of a small office in Shapiro Gym, broadcasting to the campus over the electrical wiring grid. Any radio in the dormitories could tune in.

On April 5, 1960, WBRS covered the Brandeis Mock Democratic Convention in much the same style — with an anchor, live interviews from the floor, and so on — as the major networks covered presidential nominating conventions. The winning slate at the Brandeis convention was John F. Kennedy-Adlai Stevenson.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Department, Brandeis

After the convention ended, there were four of us in the WBRS studio: Mike Grossman ’61, J.J. O’Leary ’61, Steve Rudin ’60, and me. Because mock conventions were considered real news at the time, one of us came up with the idea of calling Sen. Kennedy, H’58, to tell him of his victory at Brandeis and ask for a comment.

As it happened, April 5 was also the date of the Democratic primary in Wisconsin, in which Kennedy defeated Sen. Hubert Humphrey. And so, enterprising and resourceful, we dialed the Hotel Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, and asked to speak with Kennedy campaign headquarters. After the operator put us through, we identified ourselves as the Brandeis University radio station and asked to speak with the senator. To our surprise, the next voice we heard was Kennedy’s.

“We’re calling, senator,” we informed him, “with the good news that you’ve just won the Brandeis Mock Democratic Convention, held this evening on our campus in Waltham. We’re on the air now, sir. Would you care to make a comment?”

JFK’s reply, as I remember it, went something like this: “As an honorary Brandeis alumnus, I’m extremely pleased to learn this and proud, as always, of my second alma mater. Let me add that, looking ahead in the next few months, my hope is that, as Brandeis goes, so, too, will every other state in the upcoming primaries, including California.”

Whereupon, we WBRS reporters, pleased with our scoop, respectfully thanked the candidate and wished him a good evening. We might have recorded this conversation, but it didn’t occur to us to do so, unfortunately. And so ended a peak moment, if I may say so, in the early history of the Brandeis radio station.

Stephen Bluestone is a poet and retired English professor in New York City.