Radio Days: One man's collection lives on

Radios were the late George Helmer's passion. The older the better. Taking in his radio collection in the Riverside home where his widow lives transports one back to those early radio days when families gathered around to listen to the Ozzie and Harriet show, Bob Hope or Fred Waring, or heard the deep, far-off voice of Edward R. Murrow broadcasting his vivid accounts of the London Blitz during WWII .

"All of us growing up listened to those little radios in our bedroom," says Robyn Helmer, George's widow. "There was something so magical about it. Signals coming through the air that you couldn't see coming to your house. It was so much more fascinating than television. It was miraculous."

Robyn is now custodian of George's collection. There are radios -- big and small and in all styles -- on display in numerous rooms of her house, including the basement.

"We went to some of the strangest houses to look at radios," Robyn says, recalling her husband's collecting days. There were the radio swaps up in Nashua, N.H. and the more upscale haunts in New Haven, where they found art deco radios. "I carried the money," she says. "The people who were buying were interior decorators for stores that would resell them for enormous prices. George said he never paid more than $25 for any of them."

A fellow Riverside resident shared Helmer's passion.

"George had the best collection," says Bill Baker, another radio buff and president emeritus of Channel 13. He remembers a prize piece owned by his friend George. "One radio I coveted was one with a swastika on it that was issued by the Nazi government so people could listen to the propaganda," Baker says.

"George had the best collection," said Baker, who early on collected radios before switching to microphones. ("They take up less space," he said.)

Robyn credits Baker for spurring her husband's interest in collecting radios. And Baker credits Robyn for her support of George's hobby. "She had such good taste and allowed for their display," says Baker, "while others were relegated to keeping theirs in their basements."

While it may have been Baker who brought George to radios, it was George who brought Baker to Channel 13, as a recruiter in the communications field with Spencer Stuart, an executive search firm. "When Channel 13 was looking for a CEO, they approached me," says Baker.

"We both had a love for the broadcasting business," adds Baker, "We thought of it as a very high calling. We were interested in old equipment. We went to fairs for radio collectors held by the Antique Wireless Society to get a sense of what things were worth. There were 50 people there selling radios. We never sold anything. George even made sure they worked.

"Robyn wanted us to buy those bakelite radios that cost $100 to $200 dollars, but they were too expensive for us," Baker says. "We didn't buy the best radios -- if we did we'd have been better off today."

Greenwich has a significant history in radio, according to Baker. "It had the first home radio station in America. It was in a shack. There's a monument near St. Michael's Church dedicated to that station for being the first to transmit across the Atlantic," he says.

Greenwich did, indeed, make history when Greenwich radio pioneer Edwin Armstrong and his team made the first trans-Atlantic shortwave radio broadcast on Dec. 11, 1921 from his station 1BCG. The monument marking that event can be found on the traffic circle on North Street and Clapboard Ridge Road.

That transmission breakthrough led to the ham radio hobby enjoyed by both George Helmer and Bill Baker. "George and Bill were ham operators along with Walter Slack from Greenwich," says Robyn. "The three lived within a mile of each other and each Saturday and Sunday they would get on the radio and talk about nothing for hours and hours."

"During the WWII years, George owned a radio station in Montclair," says Robyn, "He had to give it up to make a living. He knew how to do electronic things. At these radio swaps there were parts and tubes. He worked on every radio."

"He was collecting radios during the last 10 years of his life," she says. "He had the first portable telephone. He'd be talking on it riding on the New Haven Railroad."

"Now we have the iPhone," Robyn adds. "If George was alive, we'd probably never have a conversation."