What should have been a simple book about radios…
This is a picture of George B. Ferree’s WWI crystal radio from the old Fort Monmouth website. The radio had been in storage for many years by the time I first heard about it. This led to trips to Fort Monmouth to see it firsthand, to Arkansas to meet George Ferree’s son, Eddie, who provided a copy of his father’s war journal, and to several libraries and archives, meeting some wonderful people and seeing some amazing things along the way.
Here are some extra pictures of George B. Ferree’s radio that won’t be in the book. He built this crystal set from a German battery box during WWI (see the book for more details). I took these at the US Army Communications Electronics Museum at Fort Monmouth in 2006. The radio, along with much of the museum’s exhibits, are, for now, in storage at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Last week I was fortunate enough to pass through the City of Chenoa, Illinois (on the way to Chicago) on a Tuesday, one of the two days (the other is Saturday) that the Chenoa Historical Museum is open. Chenoa was home to George B. Ferree, who built a “pre-foxhole” foxhole radio from spare parts during the First World War. I had worked with the Museum before – see my previous post about the late Evy Reis – but wanted to see if they had found anything else.
We arrived a while before they opened and walked around the square a while. It is a classic small American town.
There wasn’t much activity other than a guy on his riding lawnmower down the street.
The museum opened at 10:00. It was packed with documents, photos, newspapers, and all sorts of local artifacts. They have done an excellent job collecting objects significant to the area. They had a file folder on Ferree, a shadow box with some of his metals and WWI documents, and his WWI campaign hat.
They also had an interesting little stone turtle Ferree presumably carved during the Second World War, which he also served in. It was found in a garage sale in Arizona and mailed to the historical society. How it ended up in Arizona is unknown.
I didn’t find much new information about Ferree but it was nice seeing the town and artifacts. The museum will be contacting me if anything else turns up so stay tuned…
This is Evelyn Irene “Evy” Reis, who died just over a year ago on June 7, 2012, age 93. Evy was a great encouragement to me.
She was born and lived all of her life in Chenoa, Illinois. She was an active writer and very history minded, and it was her I was put in touch with when I was tracking down information about George Ferree, the WWI veteran who built a makeshift radio found at Fort Monmouth.
Ferree it turns out was one of her high school teachers. Evy found clippings for me at the Chenoa Historical Society, and put me in touch with Eddie Ferree, George’s son, who had his father’s journal.
She stayed in touch after that, sending words of encouragement, some of her own writing, and a Christmas card every year. She was a delight and, even though I never met her in person, I miss her a great deal. Thank you, Evy.
From her obituary:
Evelyn was born September 17, 1918 in Chenoa the daughter of Harry James and Mary Henrietta (Oldenburg) Miller. She married Hugo Robert Reis on November 17, 1940 in St. Louis, MO. He passed away on May 20, 1996.
Mrs. Reis was a 1936 graduate of Chenoa High School and attended ISNU, Normal. She was an executive secretary for State Farm Insurance Companies and Chenoa Community Schools from 1951-1974. She spent the next ten years working at Meadows Mennonite Retirement Community, as Volunteer Director and Round Robin Editor. She retired in 1984 and enjoyed winters with her husband in Sarasota, FL.
She served on numerous boards in her community and was an active member of the Chenoa Women’s Club, Arts and Travel Club, and Historical Society.
Evy loved to write and many of her poems and articles are published in national magazines. She wrote and directed pageants over the years for the Chenoa’s Alumni Association, Women’s Club and United Methodist Church. She wrote and directed the pageant “Through the Years II” for Chenoa’s Sesquicentennial celebration in 2004. She authored several articles published for the Chenoa Historical Society to include “Til I Come Marching Home”, “Memories of Chenoa”, “History of Chenoa Schools”, “Chenoa School Memories” and “Thoughts, Memories and Poetry”. In July of 2005 she was named “Chenoan of the Year”
This is from a folder of notes by G. A. Wieczorek, a Signal Corps officer during WWI and an instructor at the Second Corps Signal School at Chatillon-sur-Seine. These are notes regarding using radio with observation from aircraft, one of the first military uses for both radio and airplanes.
Radios evolved dramatically during the first World War, partly because they needed to be small and light enough to be crammed into aircraft. Still they were fiddly things, and flying a wood and canvas plane while constantly adjusting spark gap radio equipment AND trying to avoid being shot down was no small task.
This definition of radio from the 1918 Ellington Field yearbook sums up the situation well.
Radio is the science whereby a pilot, in the leisure seized in the quiet moments of combat with eighteen enemy planes, while under a rattling archie fire, communicates to his commander the complexion, civil occupation and beer preference of a Hun 15,000 feet below.
“Archie” was British (and later American) slang for anti-aircraft guns.