A Small FBN Gathering 2016

A SMALL FBN GATHERING IN 2016

On May 23, 2016 a small group of FBN alumni joined together for lunch and a time of sharing. Five former FBN employees met at the Polly’s Pies restaurant located in Yorba Linda, California. Alvin and Linda Davis brought several items from the FBN archives and the personal collection of Pastor Ray Schoch. Attendees included Al Davis, Cameraman; Linda Schoch-Davis, KHOF-TV Program Director; Bernie Marston, FBN Director of Engineering; Joe Snelson, Assistant Chief Engineer and Joe Shackleford, Cameraman, Director and Corporate Administrator.

Joe Snelson’s wife, Terrie, was also there for the gathering.

Dean Burger - Doctor Burger was head of the Faith Center counseling department and was there from approximately 1972 to 1975. This author remembers a message he delivered at Camp Sa-Ha-Le where he spoke about “Tearing up the script” in our lives. In other words, forget things in the past and move forward for Christ.

Doug Cramer - Doug was originally hired for KHOF FM back when it was on South Adams street in the mid 1960's. He worked daytime at KFI radio and would come to KHOF-FM around 5:00 pm working the evening shift to midnight. He did the program logs at KFI so he would also type them up for KHOF-FM. He typed on a very old Royal typewriter and used only 2 fingers. He was the fastest typist most of us have ever seen.

Ray Gill - Ray was the mail room manager and wrote the thank you letters and receipts for the contributors. He took over reading some letters on the air daily and called it Praise the Lord, when the General Manger, Paul Crouch, wasn't available. He continued reading letters even after Paul left to start TBN. Ray started at KHOF around 1965 and left in the early 1970's

Mildred Lehman - Mildred was secretary to Dr. Willard Peirce. She took care of the curriculum and notes for the radio and TV program, Christ The Living Word. She was there from early 1970 to around mid 1975.

Patricia Manning - Pat started in the mail room working for Ray Gill in 1970. She became a secretary to Rick Quintana who was a Producer/Director for KHOF-TV. She left around 1973.

Joe Snelson - Joe joined the staff of KHOF-TV in 1971 as a maintenance engineer. He was part of the engineering team made up of Burt Lehman, Bruce Braun and Steve Pair headed up by Bernie Marston.

Harold Starks - It is believed that Harold was on the staff of KHOF-FM and was either in Sales or did weekend announcing.

Tom Xandros - Tom was the nighttime announcer/counselor . He joined KHOF-FM in the late 1960’s and left in the early 1970’s. After Tom left he was succeeded by Marcus Lehman.

This is what the reverse side of the press pass looked like, but with the name typed in identifying the individual.

Part of a radio or TV station commitment to the FCC is to serve in the “Public interest, convenience and necessity.” News is a part of that commitment. Since KHOF-FM-TV had a relative small staff most all were inducted to cover a news event if it occurred where they happened to be at the time. Most of the staff was issued press passes that would allow them to remain in an area where authorities would ask the general public to leave. A few of the press passes issued were found in the FBN archives.

The passes were obtained from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Note that all of the passes are signed by Pastor Ray Schoch. Birth dates and actual signatures were removed for privacy reasons.

From the personal collection of Pastor Schoch, this is a Shield M-102 crystal type microphone. Unfortunately, we don’t know how Pastor Schoch came about in acquiring this microphone.

While a crystal microphone is not a high quality mic we note that the physical design is similar to that used in the earlier days of Johnny Carson, which was an RCA 77DX ribbon microphone.

Doing some research we discovered this microphone sold for under $10.00 back in the 60’s and 70’s. Clicking on the picture above will open a page showing some fairly recent information on this microphone. Note that in today’s value the microphone is shown to be worth about almost $200.00!

Another microphone in Pastor Schoch’s collection is the Shure, Model 556S, Unidyne®, Unidirectional Dynamic Microphone pictured above. This is a professional microphone. It is very similar to the microphone used by Elvis Presley in many of his performances.

Pastor Schoch used this microphone when he would tape messages at home to be aired on KHOF-FM.

Note the custom made microphone stand with the call letters of KHOF placed on the base. Click on the picture above if you are interested in the technical specifications of this microphone. This microphone is estimated to be worth somewhere between $200 to $350.

Alvin and Linda Davis share some photos from Pastor Schoch’s archives with Bernie Marston. Alvin is holding a box of various memorabilia which will be shared with you on this web page.

Joe Snelson (left) and Joe Shakleford (right) share various “war stories” from the early days of FBN. We note that both Joe’s had dark hair back in the 70’s when at FBN.

Bernie Marston recalls details of events that occurred in one of the photos he is holding in his hands.

Exterior of Polly’s Pies restaurant located at 18132 Imperial Highway in Yorba Linda, CA.

MEMORABILIA SHARED AT THE GATHERING

During the times of fund raisers, which we called Praise-A-Thons, small gifts of appreciation were given to donors and advertisers that supported the ministry. To the right is a magnetic paper clip dispenser in the form of a perpetual calendar that was given out by FBN station KVOF in San Francisco. By simply rotating the green band around the holder to line up with the first day of the month the calendar showed all the days of the month and the respective day of the week.

Here is a license plate frame with the phrase “Praise The Lord” at the top. This was given out to contributors to that supported the ministry of KHOF-FM and TV.

Above is an audio power level meter calibrated in decibels. The origin of this meter is unknown and was in Pastor Schoch’s archives. It was made by the Simpson Electric Co. And most likely used in either an audio console or radio transmitter to give indication of audio level. This meter is most likely more than 60 years old. It would be interesting to know the story behind why Pastor Schoch held on to this meter.

Being too heavy and bulky to carry into the restaurant, Alvin and Linda brought boxes of messages on 1/4” reel-to-reel tapes. These tapes have messages dating into the 1960’s mostly delivered by Pastor Schoch. With access to a reel-to-reel tape recorder we will be culling through the tapes with the possibility of posting some of the messages on the SchochWaves section of the FBN web site.

Here is a ticket to The Other 6 Days show. This was a 90 minute weekly live television program that was produced in the auditorium of Faith Center before a live audience.

Joe Snelson shared an interesting video clip he had discovered. One of the directors at KHOF-TV in the early 1970’s was John Cardoza. John also hosted a program on KHOF-TV titled Outreach Unlimited. Prior to finding Christ as his savior John did bit acting parts in Los Angeles. In the 1970’s John landed a small part in the Mission Impossible episode, “The Catafalque.” In this episode John plays the part of a guard who is, in reality, an IMF agent. John is seen in the still photo on the right having just walked into the room. He has long bushy hair and sideburns. He is to the left of actor John Vernon and looking at the body in front of actress Lesley Warren. John was given a few speaking lines and is shown in the credits as Man #1. Click the photo on the right to see the short clip of John from this Mission Impossible episode.

Note: The video clip is in a .mov format

One of the particularly interesting photos was this one. It was taken from the top of the 150’ KHOF-TV tower before the antenna was mounted. The shot is looking down from the tower top plate through the hole where the antenna would sit.

This is a program schedule for KHOF-FM that was published around 1972.

Business card used by Pastor Ray Schoch. Notice that it doesn’t yet reflect the call letter change from KUDO to KVOF in San Francisco.

The small group at this gathering had an enjoyable time sharing memorabilia and stories from FBN that happened 40 years ago. We hope you also found it interesting and we thank you for allowing us to share it with you.

Mission Impossible, Fifth Season, Episode 19, The Catafalque

And, speaking of news, here is a photo that was shared of a KHOF News program. The presenters are Greg Shannon (left) and Tim Berends (right). These newscasts helped in fulfilling our commitment to the FCC for our public obligations as a licensee.

No, this did not go on the air. Tim is doing a little clowning around while off-camera. The Bible says that a merry heart does like a medicine. While we took our work seriously at FBN we also had a good time.

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Joe Snelson shared another memory. The FBN studio was located about 1-1/2 mile to the north of the Faith Center building. During the studio building refurbishment the engineers made a lot of trips between the two locations. One warm summer day circa 1974 I was driving to the studio and discovered a film crew shooting at the corner of Glendale Ave. and Windsor Rd. Seeing film crews in Glendale was nothing unusual due to its close proximity to the studios in Hollywood.

I parked my car and went across the street to a small strip mall on the Southwest corner. They were filming an episode of Emergency. In the scene, Squad 51 is traveling south on Glendale Avenue and supposed to make a quick right into the drive and pull up to where the victim is on the ground.

Take 1: Squad 51 was barreling down Glendale Avenue and slammed on the brakes. They nearly overshot the drive but managed to make it into the drive. CUT!

So, they tried it again…Take 2: This time Squad 51 got behind “John Q. Public” who was almost to the driveway entrance. Squad 51 had the red lights on but, of course, no siren. So, they ended up cutting off the poor soul driving the car so Squad 51 could enter the drive. There was almost a wreck where J. Q. Public would have “T-Boned” Squad 51. The Glendale cop that was standing next to me just covered his eyes. Fortunately there was no collision.

Later, I got to thinking about my car being across the street. Not knowing if they used any of those takes I wondered for many years if my car made it into the episode. Thanks to the reruns of the show 30 years later I found out that it didn’t. I ended up on the cutting room floor, as they say. To no big surprise, they obviously re-shot the scene after I left.

The still on the right is from the episode of Emergency I’m talking about titled, “The Mouse.” It shows a light colored car across the street to the right of Squad 51. That is where I was parked earlier. If you click on the still you will see the clip (.mov format) of the scene I described earlier but with no incidents. Oh well…as they say, “That’s show biz!” :)

Emergency, Season 4, Episode 20, The Mouse