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Good morning from Collegeville,

This week we celebrated the 47th Anniversary of the first broadcast on KSJR 90.1 from the third floor of Wimmer Hall. This is the story of how Bill Kling was selected to lead the creation of what has become the largest network of public radio stations in the United States. It was written by our intern Ellen Newkirk..

“The Saint John’s University monks chose Bill Kling to help run their fledgling public radio station (which would later become MPR) because of his “bright mind” – literally. SJU graduate Marty Mahowald shares the story of Bill Kling’s selection as the station’s leader told by his professor at Saint John’s in the 1970s, Fr. Gunther Rolfson. According to Fr. Gunther, in the 1960s, Saint John’s had a mandatory lights-out policy at 10 pm when the faculty residents would flip a switch that turned off all power on each floor of the residence halls. However, one evening Fr. Gunther took a walk around campus after he and several other monks were struggling to come up with someone to run the radio station, when he noticed a light illuminating a single room in Benet Hall.
The next day, Fr. Gunther used a master key to enter the room and found a system rigged by the student to keep the power on after the switch was flipped each night. The room belonged to Bill Kling. Eventually, the monks decided Kling’s innovative and determined spirit was just what they needed for their new endeavor. According to Mahowald, “He (Fr. Gunther) said that they knew that as a fledgling business that it would have struggles, budget challenges and many other issues to deal with and it would take someone with a lot of moxy to lead it through to success.”
It turned out to be a very successful decision; Kling served as president of MPR until 2010 and created one of the greatest public radio stations in the country. “
Ellen Newkirk, CSB, Class of 2013.

The APHC show this week is a live broadcast from The Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. Guests include country and bluegrass outfit Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, traditional music masters Mike Compton and Joe Newberry and the women’s vocal group The Nightingale Trio, plus the Royal Academy of Radio Actors and the latest News From Lake Wobegon.

“There is no limit to the good a man can do if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.” Anonymous