Leora Stutes may not be a household name for most, but nowadays she’s a known figure at WKAR.
Born in July 1925 to a farming family in Ionia, Michigan, Leora was one of the first women in America with a license to work as a radio technician.
The work was precise and would make or break whether pivotal information or entertainment made it to the air.
She worked in radio on-and-off for 50 years, and when asked why she kept coming back, her answer was simple: “Somebody had to do it.”
Now, as Leora celebrates her 101st birthday and WKAR spotlights the stories that make up Michigan’s rich history, we brought her back to the radio station for a tour of the facilities and a walk down memory lane.
A brief history of women in radio
Women’s voices were heard on the radio in the U.S. since the beginning, in music and entertainment.
They often weren’t featured on newscasts, though. In fact, it wasn’t until 1972 that Susan Stamberg was recognized as the first woman in America to host a national daily newscast, NPR’s All Things Considered.
However, women have been involved, behind-the-scenes, since the early days. The number of women involved in the engineering and operations side of radio increased significantly during World War II.
“There were so many people that were in the service. There weren't very many people with licenses to operate here," Leora said. “Where a woman would have had trouble getting a job, I was in demand at that time.”
When Leora got her first-class radio operating license in 1943, she was one of only 11 women in America to have earned it.
A century on and off the air
Leora didn’t go looking for a career in radio. It came looking for her.
“The funny part is I didn’t know anything about it until a salesman came by,” she said. “Apparently, they were calling on salutatorians and valedictorians of high schools in small towns. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I thought it sounded more interesting than what I was doing.”
That salesman was a recruiter from the DeForest Radio School in Chicago, which is now known as DeVry University.
After just three months of study and only one attempt needed at a difficult final exam, Leora came out of the radio school with a first-class license in hand. The license was a certification from the Federal Communications Commission that would allow her to operate, repair and maintain broadcast equipment.
“Where a woman would have had trouble getting a job, I was in demand at that time.”Leora Stutes
However, Leora didn’t start working at a radio station immediately. Instead, she began her career at a Lear factory in Grand Rapids, which built that broadcast equipment.
“They were making equipment for the services, and it was a good job,” she said. “I kind of got broken in a little bit doing that.”
When the war ended, the factory closed for remodeling and Leora moved on.
In 1946, Leora worked at the country music station WJEF in Grand Rapids, which is now WTKG Talk Radio. There she operated the board, leveled the microphones and played the records for whoever was hosting the show.
A friend of hers was working at WJEF’s sister station — WKZO in Kalamazoo — at the same time.
There, she met radio announcer Marion Stutes.
“He seemed so mature, and he was still in college,” she said, “but I figured he was probably married.”
Luckily for her, he wasn’t. The two started dating shortly after his graduation, and Leora and Marion Stutes got married on New Year’s Day, 1947.
The pair moved to Hawai’i that year when Marion was hired at KGMB in Honolulu. He wasn’t at that station for long before he was hired as program director at KHBC, a sister station in Hilo, Hawai’i that now uses the call sign KPUA.
Leora was also hired at KHBC as an engineer.
“I’ve been thinking lately about that, and I think maybe what they wanted to do was snag me to work for them,” Leora said. “They said they’d take me too, but I think they were really angling for me.”
After two years of radio work and snorkeling in Hawai’i, the couple moved to Lansing in the early 1950s to be closer to Leora’s aging parents and start a family of their own.
As the primary caretaker, Leora took a hiatus from her radio career to raise their children.
They had three sons and two daughters, the youngest of whom is now 60 years old.
However, raising a family didn’t take Leora away from the radio forever.
In 1976, the Central United Methodist Church in Lansing installed a radio station and Marion began doing live commentary over the church worship service broadcast.
Leora, of course, ran the engineering side of things.
She did that for 15 years before she trained another congregant to take her place.
“My husband would get mad at me if I made a mistake,” Leora said, “so eventually I just got somebody else, somebody that didn’t know anything about radio in particular, and taught them how to run the board and just went to church.”
Throughout that time, Leora and her husband both contributed to WKAR’s Radio Talking Book, now known as the Radio Reading Service.
“We read the Detroit paper on Sundays and went back and forth till I started coughing,” she said.
Half-a-century after Leora earned her first-class radio operating license, her time in radio came to an end.
A look to the future
Leora has since moved into a senior living facility in Lansing, where she told the executive director that she dreamed of getting her voice on the radio one more time.
With that accomplished, Leora said she plans for her future to look a lot like her present: hosting book club, attending biweekly Zumba classes, spending time with her children and learning something new every day.
“You never know where the brilliant people are going to come from,” she said.
After touring the WKAR studios, Leora wrote a letter to the reporters, hosts and directors who worked to get her back on the air.
She said the experience made her feel like she was a “queen for a day,” but that she wasn’t sure she’d done anything to “earn” it.
Leora spent the last century learning, sharing her knowledge, raising a family and working to keep radio on the air.
It’s hard to imagine anyone more deserving.
Happy 101st birthday, Leora.
