Once the equipment and baggage were loaded aboard, Clarence and the Williamses boarded the ship, which set sail for Ecuador the following morning. Clarence’s spirit soared as they sailed out of New York Harbor and headed south. If all went well, by Christmas Clarence’s dream of going south with radio would become a reality as Radio HCJB began broadcasting.
Chapter 11
On the Air at Last
Two weeks after setting out from New York, the SS Santa Inez arrived in Guayaquil and dropped anchor in the Guayas River. The boxes of radio equipment and baggage were loaded onto a barge and taken ashore to a customs warehouse. When Clarence, Eric, and Ann made it ashore several hours later, they cleared their baggage through customs. Then the baggage was taken across the river to the railway station, where early the next morning it was loaded onto the train for the trip to Quito.
As the narrow-gauge train climbed its way up the steep switchbacks, Clarence watched Eric and Ann press their wide-eyed faces to the window to take in the sight. Ecuador was indeed a beautiful country, and Clarence knew that when Katherine and the children finally arrived, they would find themselves at home here.
Finally the train arrived in Quito, and Clarence, Eric, and Ann clambered into a taxi. Clarence gave the driver the address of the property Reuben Larson had rented with an option to buy later, and they were off. When the taxi arrived at the address, the three of them jumped out and stood in front of Quinta Corston, surveying the scene. Clarence smiled to himself. It was hard to imagine such a tranquil spot right in the middle of a bustling city. The two-and-a-half-acre property resembled a botanical garden, with its towering eucalyptus trees, magnolias, pink bougainvillea vines, roses, and lilies. There was even an orchard in one corner, with apples and peaches ripe and ready to pick. The house looked like an English cottage, complete with dark green ivy climbing the stone walls.
As Clarence, Eric, and Ann stood surveying the property, a man emerged from the house and waved. It was Reuben. “Welcome to your new home!” he yelled.
Clarence greeted Reuben warmly and introduced him to Eric and Ann. After the introduction Reuben led them on a tour of the property. As they walked, Reuben and Clarence talked about how to transform the place into a radio station.
“The living room and sun porch in the cottage would be great for the studio and control room,” Clarence said, eyeing the two-foot-thick adobe walls that would make the rooms soundproof.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Reuben replied. “In fact, I have a worker ready to cut a hole through the wall and put in a glass panel to observe the announcer from the control room. Of course the acoustics aren’t great, but I figured you would be able to work something out.” Reuben clapped Clarence on the back.
“Just one more challenge,” Clarence laughed. “What about a transmitter building? Are there any suitable outbuildings on the property?”
“Only one,” Reuben replied, “and I hesitate to call it a building. The last owner built a shelter for his thoroughbred sheep. It has two mud walls and a corrugated tin roof.”
“That’s a start,” Clarence said, his mind already swirling with ways to enclose the sheep shelter and turn it into a usable facility. “And we don’t have any time to lose. I’ve decided we should aim to be on the air on Christmas Day. That’s two and a half months away. What do you think?”
“Sounds like we’ll need some miracles to make that deadline,” Reuben said. “But I’m willing to do my best. We’ll have to think about antennas right away.”
“I have some sketches in my bag. Let’s get them out and go over them,” Clarence said.
And so began the first of many activity-packed days as Clarence, Reuben, and Eric prepared to put Radio HCJB on the air.
Despite having been loaded and unloaded fifteen times, sometimes roughly, onto various forms of transportation since leaving Chicago, thirty of the thirty-one boxes made it safely all the way to Quito. No one, though, could account for the missing box, which was given up as lost. When Eric explained that the missing box contained all the spare radio tubes, Clarence immediately telegraphed back to the United States for more to be sent. He knew it would take months for them to arrive, and he could only hope and pray that the radio tubes they had would not break.
The antenna presented more of a problem than anticipated. The tall, steel structure that Clarence had sketched out on paper had to yield to a more practical, improvised solution—two eighty-five-foot eucalyptus poles from the telephone company. Eric, along with a group of people he had gathered off the street, pushed the two poles into upright positions and set them in the ground two hundred feet apart. Guy wires were attached to hold the poles in place, and then a single antenna wire was strung between the poles. Two pulleys, one at the top of each pole, had been attached to hold the antenna wire before the poles were hoisted into place. But now that the poles were up, there was a problem—how to get the wire to the top of the pole and around the pulleys. The answer turned out to be Pedro, the gardener’s small son. Pedro shimmied up first one pole and then the other with the end of a rope between his teeth. At the top of each pole he fed the rope around the pulley. Attached to the rope was the antenna wire. As the men on the ground tugged at the rope, the rope pulled the antenna wire into place around the pulleys, and then the wire was secured in place. Before it had been hoisted into place, Clarence and Eric had carefully measured the antenna wire several times to make sure it was the exact length to broadcast at 50.26 meters, or 5,986 kilocycles, the broadcast frequency the station had been assigned.
While Eric was busy erecting the antenna, Clarence fixed the acoustic problem in the “studio” by placing the microphone inside the two-by-four-foot packing case that the transmitter had been packed in. He lined the case with some of his mother’s old velvet drapes that some of the radio parts had been packed in.
With the acoustic problem solved, Clarence, with the help of their Indian gardener, set to work adding two more walls to the sheep shelter to completely enclose it, and then the two men laid a concrete floor in the place. When the walls were finished and the floor laid, they whitewashed the adobe walls inside and out. When they were done, it was hard to tell that the structure had once been an open-ended sheep shelter. With the shed complete, Eric began moving in the transmitter and setting it up.
Clarence also had the matter of what to do with the radio receivers to think about. True to their word, the Reed brothers in Guayaquil had imported six radio receivers and sent them on up to Clarence in Quito. These six radios brought the total number of radio receivers in Ecuador to thirteen. Now Clarence and Reuben had to come up with a strategy of how best to deploy the receivers.
While the final touches to the radio station were being made, Clarence had something else on his mind. It was nearly time for Katherine to give birth, and Clarence waited anxiously for news from the United States. Finally a telegram arrived at Quinta Corston on December 15, 1931, Clarence’s thirty-first birthday. It was a boy! Clarence was overjoyed. Everything had gone well with the delivery, Katherine was recovering, and Clarence could hardly wait for her and the children to arrive in Ecuador so that he could see and hold his new son. That night Clarence sat down and penned a poem to his son. Verse one read,
Dear little fellow—newcomer, dear,
Welcome you are, and cherished here;
Sorry I was not there the day
You came into our lives to stay
Bringing us joy—
My little boy!
The fourth verse read,
We’ve called you Richard Wesley, son.
One was my pal’s name—mine is one,
Just be like him—you’ll make me glad—
Welcome! my son, from your faraway dad.
Promise of joy,
My little boy.
By now it was only ten days until Radio HCJB was scheduled to go on the air, and Clarence, Reuben, and Eric worked at a frantic pace. As often as he could, Stuart Clark came and helped, as did John and Ruth Clark and Paul Young whenever they happened to be in Quito. Many other missionaries from various denominations in and around Quito also came to help out when they could.
On Christmas Eve everything was ready, and Clarence and Eric decided to test the system one last time. As Clarence flipped the transmitter dial, he heard a crackling noise and then saw a flash of blue light. His heart skipped a beat as he turned to Eric.
“That was the power tube,” Eric wailed. “It’s blown, and we don’t have a spare. They were all in the box that went missing.”
“God, show us what to do,” Clarence prayed aloud. Then he remembered that Ecuador had one lone ham radio operator, a man who lived 120 miles away in Riobamba.
“I have to go and see if I can borrow a new one,” Clarence said as he headed for the door. “I’m off to Riobamba. It’s a six-hour drive in the best conditions. Pray that I make it back in time.”
Clarence drove the car south over a bumpy and at times deeply rutted road, but finally he made it to Riobamba, where he inquired at a local store as to where Carlos Córdovez lived. Clarence roared up in the car to the front door of Señor Córdovez’s home and rushed inside. He introduced himself and explained why he had come. Although Señor Córdovez did not have a spare tube—a blue mercury power rectifier—he did something that surprised Clarence. Using a screwdriver, he opened up the cover on his own radio transmitter. Then he reached inside and gently removed the needed power tube and handed it to Clarence. “You may borrow my tube. This should get you broadcasting,” he said as he handed it over.
“Señor Córdovez, you are truly a gracious man. I thank you for the tube. I know God will bless you for your kindness,” Clarence said. With that he was on his way again, headed back up the bumpy road for Quito, the precious tube wrapped in a blanket on the seat beside him.
It was Christmas morning when Clarence arrived back in Quito. Everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief when he walked through the door at Quinta Corston with the power tube in his hand. Eric quickly went to the transmitter room to install it, though he did not have time to test the tube. As far as everyone could tell, they were ready for their first broadcast, scheduled for 4:00 that afternoon.
Clarence looked at his watch. It was five minutes to four. Everyone was in his or her position. Eric was in the transmitter room, and Clarence knew that he would be frantically praying that the new power tube worked properly and they were able to transmit. Ann sat behind the console in the next room, ready to control the broadcast. Ruth sat at the organ, looking over the music, and Clarence held his trombone. Off to the side, Reuben and Stuart were going over their notes for the messages they would each deliver.
As soon as the clock struck four, Ruth cranked up the organ, and Clarence joined her on the trombone as they played the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” When they were done playing, Reuben leaned into the microphone and announced, “Esta es la Voz de los Andes, Radiodifusora HCJB” (This is the Voice of the Andes, Radio HCJB). Then it was time for Erma Clark and Edna Figg, a teacher from the Christian and Missionary Alliance school, to sing a duet. When they were done, John Clark stepped up to the microphone and delivered a prayer. His brother Stuart followed him to the microphone and gave a brief message in English. And then it was Reuben’s turn to preach in Spanish.
Clarence felt goose bumps on his arms as he listened to Reuben for the first time ever deliver the gospel over the radio in a foreign land. Of course Clarence could not help but also wonder what was going on in the transmitter room. Was the tube working properly? Was the program really being broadcast? And was anyone listening to it? Clarence hoped so. In the end he and Reuben had decided to distribute to various government officials the six radio receivers the Reed brothers had sent them. Now he hoped not only that those officials were listening but also that they had gathered a crowd to listen along with them.
