CHESTER – May 1, 1949, marked the first live radio broadcast of the 10 a.m. worship service of St. John Lutheran Church in Chester, almost exactly 100 years after the founding of the church, April 22, 1849. Today that radio broadcast is still live each Sunday morning at 10 a.m. as well as during Advent and Lent for the Wednesday evening midweek services along with 11 p.m. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day services.
In the late 40’s, Leonard Weber, a member of the congregation, put together and installed the radio electronics in the church. Weber gained his experience during WWII in radio electronics and after he returned home, he wanted to reach out to the homebound and everyone around the area with radio broadcasts of the church service. Having accomplished this, he began as the first technician for the St. John’s KSGM broadcasts on May 1, 1949. The first announcer was Teacher Walter Beinke. Some time later Leonard reached out to fellow member, Charlie Heinks, to work a rotation with him in the radio booth as a technician. In the mid 1950’s Paul Preusse, Jr. joined the rotation as an announcer and lent his (remarkable radio) voice to the broadcasts over the next 50 plus years. Other past announcers and technicians have been Ted Search, Jr., Wib Alms, Wilbert Adams, Oscar Fey, Brian Snider, Orville Benson, Herman Stallman, Lynn Rickenberg, Warren Buescher, Chris Urquhart, Steve Egge, and Amanda Winterstein.
Volunteers continue to produce the broadcasts with KSGM today. Pictured are announcer, Tim Lochhead (left) and technician, Tony Young (right) as they were getting set to begin a recent Sunday morning broadcast in the church’s radio booth. Check out that phone on the right. I don’t know anything about the technical part of the operation so Tony may be able to answer any questions about that if you would like to know how it works. His cell phone number is 618-521-9346
Lochhead has been announcing over the past 20 years and Young has been a technician for 26 years. Others who participate in the broadcast rotation are announcers Dallas Redeker 11 years, Jason Coffey two and a half years, Brett Klindworth 4 years, and Mardell Granger 45 years. Additional technicians currently supporting the radio broadcast are Bob Platt 42 years, Charlie Bargman 25 years and Dave Verseman four years.
The worship services are broadcast over KSGM AM 980 and live streamed at https://ksgm980.com/listen-live/
Resources for this article included St. John’s archives and the children of Leonard Weber, Lynn, Mavis, Kevin, and Brad. All of them share memories of going with their dad to that historical radio booth