Hello there, good friends.

I went to Drake University.

I majored in speech and English and theater mostly, and discovered that I could take a minor in radio.

Well, at that time, the radio school was just really beginning.

I always say that I was bitten by the bug at that time because from then on, everything that I did seemed geared toward my developing some ability to to talk, to speak and maybe do some radio.

Well, I finished Drake University in 1939, and well, I looked at Chicago, I looked at the big cities thinking that maybe I might find something in radio that I liked, but nothing seemed to quite satisfied till I had a letter from a friend with whom I'd gone to school at Drake, who had been working at W-N-Y-X in Yankton, South Dakota.

Well, I'd never heard of Yankton, South Dakota.

570 W-N-E-X News Sunshine expected all throughout your day today.

She came off the train from Des Moines in the late thirties here in Yankton and began working at the radio station, basically as a secretary, as a gopher.

went down into a place which was later described by my dear friend Barbara Bates sister when she came to see what her big sister and friend.

When we're working in this glamorous job of radio.

And she said, Hmm, you're just like another oat in a bin.

And that's just about what it was.

She always kidded her first desk was a Heinz 57 box nailed to the wall It was very raw, very plain, but very exciting for a 22 year old woman in doing something that she thought was going to be a great lifetime.

Well, for a year and a half, I loved what I was doing with Barb and with writing continuity and And then came the big day when I was asked if I would like to take over in the Woman's department.

Oh, what an exciting day that was for me to have my first real radio show.

The radio station had a women's program at the time, and the host of that program, who was a friend of women's left.

And so they asked her, Would you like to do that?

I started looking at some of the mail that came in from my predecessors work and began to formulate what was going to be eventually my women's program, which eventually they I was called your neighbor Lady because Barb, was doing a program on W-N-A-X called Ma Brown and the boys and I was to take over for her while she was gone on vacation.

And I remember her saying to the her listeners, My neighbor lady's going to come in and take over for me.

person who you got to know and the neighbor lady was the name of the program, but she really was your neighbor lady.

It was your neighbor lady you talk to over the fence.

And she related it to the farm women that were out there that for many of them, they were all home with their kids.

The husband was off working all day, and so the neighbor was two or three miles, four miles away.

This was the only female companionship, the only female voice, adult voice they would hear during the day, during the week sometimes.

we grew up together then.

My listening audience and myself.

And it was absolutely a wonderful, wonderful relationship.

She was only 23 when she started.

And a lot of the women who were who were beginning to listen to her when she first went on the air were probably older, but she had this warm, welcoming voice that exuded friendship.

Well, being called your neighbor lady actually set the pace for all the years that were to come.

Now, mind you, this was July 14th, 1941, that I started on the air as your neighbor lady.

when on in the thirties and forties into the sixties, she had an hour every day, five days a week, sometimes 2 hours a day, depending on the time.

I loved the fact that in radio it was just the engineer and myself with the microphone in between with the phrase, Hello there, good friends.

I think it's a little bit like reading a book and enjoying conjuring up the things that you read in the book as opposed to seeing a movie about that book and having it all depicted in front of you.

And I just plain preferred reading the book or talking to my listeners.

she was amazing salesperson too and she did it so easily.

And if she didn't believe in the product, the news, she wouldn't sell it.

I mean, she had to have some connection to it and then she could was convinced that it was good for her listeners.

I mean, she wouldn't just sell anything.

We were doing in-store demonstrations when I was selling General Electric Ranges.

I would demonstrate the ranges.

I'd go to fairs, and a lot of things, too, that they were selling because they sold everything from liniment to checks to tires to spark plugs through the Gurneys and others at that time.

So an early kind of Amazon, but they sold all kinds of stuff over the air and through the mail.

But the other mail response was amazing.

That came from, I think, at least 11 states.

I've seen maps that show it from Wyoming and Missouri, Manitoba.

I mean, good grief At one time she would receive 800,000 letters a year.

there were eight women opening my mail to take care of the orders that came in and to set aside letters that they knew that I would like to see.

And I've seen the pictures of the truckloads of bags of mail, not just a bag, but a truckload of bags of mail.

And when made, attempt to respond to everything the letters, which came from my listeners immediately set the tone of what we were going to do throughout the years.

I tried to let them know that we were going to be talking about things that mattered I've always believed that a homemaker is a very important and satisfying position and one that deserves a great deal of time and effort and reverence.

And I do feel that we were able to do that throughout the years.

I used the letters as a guideline for what people wanted to hear.

But of course, at the same time doing the things that I wanted to share.

And I've always loved to read poems, poetry of almost any kind and quotations.

And so we always ended with a favorite quotation.

Well, of course, that brought favorite quotations from all of our listeners.

and from Montana and Wyoming and Kansas and all surrounding areas, because at that time were able to reach hundreds of miles away letter from a woman she lived out in Western South Dakota someplace.

I think it was near Buffalo, if I'm not mistaken.

They had a ranch.

And she said, you're the only female voice I hear all winter long.

She was on her ranch and just didn't get out during the day.

And it made me realize that I had something that was very precious, that I needed to give my very best.

so many of the letters were, you know, I hear the voice.

I hear you're my friend, you're somebody that I can relate to.

And she was amazing in that and how she could communicate so well to these women.

a man came down and called me and said, I'd like to visit with you about Limousin cattle.

And I said, Well, that sounds interesting.

I'd be glad to talk to you about it.

Have you talked to any of our sales reps?

No, but I want to talk to you about this.

So we came down, we visited at length and I said, How did you ever decide that you wanted me to talk about cattle on the air?

And he said, Well, I heard you one day and you were talking about Dakota Splash a purified water, and I decided anybody could sell water, could sell my limousin cattle.

she was very influential in the bottom line revenues of the radio station through that time, too.

1941 brought me a meeting with Harry Speece , who was to become my husband.

This was one of those wonderful things that just the strange offshoots of war.

He was stationed in Yankton with the Navy Air Corps and a very dear friend, My roommate at the time, Maggie Nielsen, said while I was on vacation, she had met a young man that she said, I know he's just right for you.

So it was a blind date.

I met Harry Spears and for two years we corresponded so each other three or four times and eventually we're married.

She and Harry were in love from the very beginning.

You could see it in their eyes, the way they interacted.

And Harry gave them the biggest hugs every time I got a hug from Harry, just knocked my breath out.

part of the reason that I was called the neighbor lady was that I was so young to be talking to people about running a household.

And the management was afraid that maybe I would not be believable.

Well, somehow or other, being married did seem to make it more believable.

I was just about going to get married at the time.

And she said to me, you know, congratulations on getting married, but I want to tell you something.

Don't ever go to bed mad.

And I tried to keep that in mind.

Sometimes it didn't work.

But no, the love between Harry and when was absolutely wonderful to see because it was visual and it was it was a treasure.

We stayed in Des Moines for a couple of years.

Harry was still in the service when we were married, and came back in December of 45 my boss asked if I would be at all interested in going back to W-N-A-X I said Yes, indeed I would.

And so we went back to Yankton.

they got married.

They had the kids.

And having her first child, she went to the manager at the time and says, well, I'm going to have to quit because we're going to have our first child.

And the manager said, No, you're not.

went in to Mr. Hoffman and said, Well, looks like I'm going to have to quit my job, Phil.

I'm going to have a little one.

Oh, well, that's all right.

We'll just move your broadcast to home.

You'll just broadcast directly from your house.

Well, the idea sounded good to me.

So a month before Gretchen was born, we started broadcasting from home woman, female mother was able to work from home way ahead of the work from home thing that's going on now.

And she would have had her own little studio at home for a number of years from the late forties into the fifties.

And the old engineers talk about the set up and had their and how it going to and it was a expensive endeavor for the radio station to make that work.

when COVID hit, everybody was doing a lot of remote working from home and things like that.

And Wynn was a pioneer in working from home?

When W-N-A-X allowed her to bring some equipment and she could raise her kids while working.

And sometimes they even got into the act as well.

But that was one of the biggest things that that I was just amazed at that even in the, you know, the technology of the time, they could do that.

the neighbor ladies out there that were listening got to hear how Wynn raised her children sometimes in real time.

Once in a while there were a few problems with a crying child.

However, I didn't ever have to leave my home early in the morning with a child in a bassinet to take to a neighbor or to a baby sitter.

when I took the trip up the stairs to the little room that was to be the nursery And many of my listeners knew before we got to the top of the stairs what was going to happen, because I was very much out of breath.

my program had lengthened from 30 minutes to 50 minutes.

And I loved every moment of it.

I had people coming into the studio, I had people stopping at my home As soon as you met her, she was your friend, she had this warm, welcoming voice that exuded friendship.

in the sixties, women had gone back to work during the war and were not completely satisfied with not working.

After their husbands came back from the war so that there was a difference in coverage of radio stations, Many small stations had popped up across the country and W-N-A-X was still heard all over that wide area.

But there had been a change in policy and personality.

Radio had been changed when on in the thirties and forties into the sixties, she had an hour every day, five days a week, sometimes 2 hours a day, depending on the time.

My time was chopped from 50 minutes as a full program to six short segments.

Well, I knew that was not right for me and I was troubled by it.

So in 1973, I left the radio station.

that was what impressed me she was able to roll over the good, the bad over the years, you know, in her program in the end, you know, when she left the radio station and she was so positive all the time, that's what really impressed me about Wynn And Harry just a great, great couple, great family.

Every year we had put out what we called the Neighbor Lady book.

From 1941 to 42.

We put out a book every year The last one was 1972, and that was a very big and very important part of my life.

cookbooks were a project that started that she really helped develop in the late thirties, and they went into the seventies.

And so you see the complete sets that are out there on eBay and other things that people still hold, which is amazing.

when I was a kid.

We had Wynn and Harry over to Mom and Dad's house for supper, so I wanted to make one of my recipes for Wynn and Harry and the family, and it was chocolate pudding.

It calls for a cup of sugar.

I put a cup of salt in it and thankfully I tasted it before it went into the dishes to serve to the neighbor lady whose recipes were very, very famous throughout five state region.

And I was just appalled.

So was my mother.

and it was recipes from the listeners and her thoughts, poems, helpful hints, tips that she did.

It was an amazing kind of compendium almanac of homemaking tips that she gave to all our listeners, her neighbor ladies.

she got some sort of a letter that her husband was listening to the program and he didn't have a piece of paper to write the recipe down that she was giving at the end of the show.

And he scratched it on the hood of his tractor as best he could.

And so she was she was pretty impressed with that.

very dear friend of mine, Bob Karolevitz.

Daughter Jill, who is a very fine writer in her own right, said they wanted to do a book about the neighbor lady.

Well, I said fine.

If you can think of something to write about it, be delighted.

She was a family friend from way back.

My aunt Marie Billings used to work at W-N-A-X as a receptionist.

And so, of course, then she knew when from that and became friends with her.

we'd get together with Wynn and Harry and Anne-Marie and Uncle Emmett and Mom and Dad and have lots and lots of good times together.

when this project started to come about, I was living about two blocks from when, And I was unemployed at the time and okay, so too, let's write a book.

she won a Peabody Award, which was nice.

And South Dakota Hall of Fame, those kind of things, as she should.

I mean, this this was a normal woman who had been thriving for decades, just a year or two, I mean, from a thirties into the seventies.

Good grief.

went to see her when she was in the nursing home after after several years.

And then her family came to me after she died and asked if I would write her eulogy, which I did, and brought back even more memories.

even after they passed on Wynn and Harry continue to serve as they donated their bodies to the U-S-D medical school, I mean, my goodness, you know, they thought about that ahead of time.

And and the funeral and everything.

It was it was sad.

But yet these people continue to serve continue to serve their their their people, their neighbor ladies You know, she was on the air from the thirties into the 2000s.

I mean, my goodness, I don't think anybody ever did that again.

Obviously, her legacy is not only in broadcasting, but in the way she treated people and interacted with people.