The First Martyr to the Radio: The Story of Lester Wolf
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, when the radio first crackled to life in the 1920s, it transformed how Americans shared news, music, and hope. But behind those first transmissions were young innovators like Lester Wolf, who saw endless promise in a brand-new medium. Working at one of Chicago’s early radio stations, Wolf helped shape the early days of commercial broadcasting, unaware that his ambition would come at a devastating cost. His great-grandnephew Robert Anderson revisits a forgotten family story that mirrors the birth of modern communication in the United States.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.1 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. |
| 0:18.3 | In the early 1920s, a brand new innovation swept across America. It was audible, |
| 0:24.5 | it was immediate, and as you'll soon hear, dangerous. We're talking about broadcast radio. |
| 0:31.9 | Here to share the story of the early days of radio and the dramatic tale of Lester Wolfe, |
| 0:37.1 | a 19-year-old radio tech who dropped out |
| 0:40.8 | of high school to make a name for himself at WOK in the suburbs of Chicago, is Robert Anderson, |
| 0:48.2 | his great-grand-nephew. Let's get into this story. Take it away, Robert. |
| 0:55.1 | In Homewood, Illinois, a south suburb of Chicago, at the time it was a community of about 2,000 people. |
| 1:02.5 | Homewood actually had one of those radio stations in the early days of commercial broadcasting. |
| 1:08.2 | The name of the station, the call letters, W.O.K. Radio. |
| 1:12.9 | 1380 on your AM dial. |
| 1:15.9 | W.O.K. had come into existence in 1925, owned and operated by Neuteroon Manufacturing Company, |
| 1:24.8 | which made radio receivers. |
| 1:31.3 | B bulky, big, expensive, difficult to operate. WOK, like most radio stations at that time, |
| 1:35.3 | even the stations in bigger cities like Chicago or New York, |
| 1:40.3 | it was difficult to fill the time during the day with programming. |
| 1:46.0 | There were no phonographs hooked up to mixers that would take a signal to a transmitter |
| 1:53.0 | and be able to play a record on the air. It didn't exist then. |
| 1:57.0 | There were no talk shows. |
| 1:59.0 | There were no broadcast of news every hour. What do you put on the air for people to listen to? Well, a common program for stations all over the country and for WOK and Homewood was to broadcast from local dance halls and orchestra halls. And these are the programs that people were fascinated by. |
| 2:21.3 | This is wireless telegraphy. |
... |
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