Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you on a mission which is unprecedented in radio broadcasting.

A mission which is unprecedented in radio broadcasting.

Kind of sounds like melodramatic radio age hyperbole, I know.

But the speaker was, in fact, doing something unusual.

We had essentially just been handed the airwaves at NBC, at the National Broadcasting Company,

set loose to say whatever she wanted.

Now that was unusual because she didn't work for NBC.

She wasn't a reporter or a paid commentator or a politician or even a well-known public

figure.

And random people don't just get to jump on a national radio broadcast whenever they feel

like they have something to say.

But the woman behind the mic that day, she was someone who was in a unique and interesting

situation.

I am the widow of Ernest Lundin, United States Senator for Minnesota, who was killed in an

airplane crash on August 31st, 1940.

The widow of Senator Ernest Lundin, her name was Norma.

When Norma Lundin took to the airwaves that Sunday in May 1941, she and her family were

very much still in the throes of grief.

It hadn't even been a year since her husband had died in that terrible, mysterious plane

crash.

But that's not exactly what Norma wanted to talk about when she stepped behind the mic

that day.

...