September 6, 1981
Marilyn Koezuna joins the KNOM air staff.
Marilyn is a King Island Inupiaq Eskimo who helped the station while in high school. She returns as a Jesuit volunteer, the second Alaska Native to do so for a full year.
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September 2008: Amy departs
Amy (Flaherty) Gorn, who served at KNOM Radio for over six years: first as a volunteer, and then as a permanent staff member in the position of public affairs director.
September 1, 2008
After more than six years of service to the mission, Amy Flaherty departs for more urban parts of Alaska. She has produced hundreds of programs and news interviews. Her replacement is Laureli Kinneen, who grew up in the town of Unalakleet, 146 miles southeast of Nome. Her husband Fen was raised in Nome and, like Laureli, grew up a KNOM listener.
August 2009: Transmitter trouble
August 23, 2009
The transmitter fails this morning, just as the automated remote control commands the increase to daytime power. From Anchorage, Tom Busch talks general manager Ric Schmidt into coaxing it to operate at very low power, about 2,000 watts. After flying to Nome, Tom discovers that a jumper cable 100 feet above ground has severed. Due to high reflected power, the station might be actually transmitting at only a handful of watts.
August 1993: Tom Bunger arrives at KNOM
August 15, 1993
From Tacoma, Washington, Tom Bunger is among KNOM’s six volunteers, all new.
He’s assigned as news reporter, working under the supervision of news director Katy Clark. In 1994, Tom is hired as a salaried news director, a position he holds for three years before leaving the station for a career in the computer industry.
It is Tom who creates KNOM’s website in 1997, and he continues to help out the station from time to time.
August 1993: What’s a maar?
An example of maars (albeit in southwestern Alaska, rather than the Seward Peninsula); these are the Ukinrek Maars on the Alaska Peninsula, as photographed in 1977.
August 6, 1993
On KNOM’s daily feature interview program, Alaska volcanologist Jim Beget informs listeners that the large lakes on the northern Seward Peninsula are actually maars, the widest volcanic openings in the world. They last erupted ten thousand years ago.
August 1992: A thank-you from the governor
Former Alaska governor Walter Hickel (right) and wife Ermalee Hickel, photographed in Anchorage, Alaska in 2008.
August 2, 1992
A letter arrives out of the blue from Alaska governor Walter Hickel. “Thank you for your generous commitment and devotion to the communities in the Nome area,” He writes. “Your radio broadcasts are really making a difference.” The governor and his wife are annual KNOM contributors.
July 1971: Help from John Mullaney
July 25, 1971
Pro bono consulting engineer John H. Mullaney has flown to Nome from Gaithersburg, Maryland to supervise the installation of new high voltage filters, and KNOM resumes operation at 6:55 this morning.
Mullaney donates the entire week’s work.
July 1999: Rod Ewing paints the tower
In the summer of 1999, Anchorage tower contractor Rod Ewing steadily paints the KNOM transmitter tower, foot by foot.
July 21, 1999
Rod Ewing begins to apply a new coat of paint to the KNOM tower. How do you paint a tower? “The first thing you do,” Rod jokes, “is take a bucket of paint and pour it over your head, so you get that part taken care of right off the bat.” Actually, it’s tedious work, using cotton mittens, taking about two minutes per foot of tower.
July 1971: Thanks to a nurse, a last-minute fix
Sally Duggan, Kitty Orris, and Ida Schilter: three of the 71 nurses who, during KNOM’s first 15 years, supported the station by donating their entire salary to the radio mission. The nurses worked at Nome’s hospital but lived in KNOM’s volunteer housing.
July 13, 1971
One day before scheduled sign-on, a copper strap burns apart in the antenna tuning unit, removing the antenna from the transmitter. Six small resistors burn in the transmitter’s final section. In isolated Nome, they are impossible to replace.
However, support nurse Kitty Orris (pictured, in the middle of the photo) has just escorted a patient to Anchorage, where she is able to purchase the parts for transport by air the next morning.
July 1989: A visit to Provideniya
July 4, 1989
Walking on the main street of Provideniya, USSR, general manager Tom Busch encounters a young English teacher who recognizes his voice from the radio. “Everyone in Provideniya knows you!” she exclaims. Tom and son Steve are part of a Cub Scout field trip to the Soviet Union. They and the thirty others on the visit are the first ordinary Americans to visit the region, which is a militarized zone. The friendship-forging event is later recounted in the children’s book Friendship Across Arctic Waters by Claire Rudolph.
