My Mom

My Inspiration
 

by Lorry Wagner

Winifred (St. John) Mont-Eton, Chappell
Ham Radio (1927) to Computer (1999)

It was an evening in the late 1920's in San Francisco, California, when my brother, Bud, went to visit his friend, John. When he came home from his visit, he was all excited about the ham radio station that John had set up. That's what he was going to do, too. To get the money needed to do this, he applied for and got an early morning paper route. He saved every penny he made, got all the material necessary, learned the International Morse Code and got his license (amateur radio call letters-W6ATO), and was in business. He spent every spare minute after school (he was still in high school) and all weekends in his radio "shack."

When it came dinner time, he would say "put my dinner in the oven and I'll get it when I'm through here." This, for a boy who loved to eat, got me wondering what was so fascinating about what he was doing-that and the fact that he was getting QSL cards (confirming contact) from interesting sounding places. So I finally said "Bud, if I learn the code and apply for my license, may I use your radio, too?" He said "yes." I did and was issued the call letters W6ATP. Very often there would be contacts with the Navy men stationed at Pearl Harbor. Some of them would stop by to see me when they returned to the mainland. Somehow, the San Francisco Examiner heard about my station and asked for an interview. They took pictures and put an article in the paper.

What fun it was to be one of the very few YL's on the amateur radio at that time. Finally, my brother, Charlie, got his license, W6HXQ, and then my father got his-W6MGI. Everyone on the air called us the "whole ham family." We handled lots of messages at the time of the big earthquake in Long Beach. We relayed messages from the people there to many places in the U.S. Afterwards we received a "thank-you" citation from the American Radio Relay League for our help. However, the most exciting contact was the one with another ham operator of the Maylay states. I later received a QSL from him on Royal stationary inviting me to visit him at the palace. Another was a contact with Australia-after that first contact we continued to write to each other until World War II. After that, I no longer heard from him. I always prayed that he had survived that dreadful time. Later on, we changed to voice contact and that was great fun, too.

When the Golden Gate Bridge linking the San Rafael area to San Francisco was in its early construction phase of installing the big suspension cables between the shores, Rudolph Mont-Eton, a young man who was a friend of the family, was asked to take the contract for shipping control in and out of the Golden Gate area which is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. At the time, he lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on his gold claims. He accepted an invitation from my folks to stay with us in San Francisco while he worked for the bridge company. How exciting-he worked from aboard a patrol boat and shuttled the freighters and big passenger ships between raisings of the cables. One weekend he took my father and me up to his home in the mountains. It was so beautiful. I fell in love with the place-and him, too. We were married when his bridge job was finished and moved to his home just outside of Georgetown, California.

Monty and I set up our ham station there at my new home near Georgetown-our antenna stretched between the tops of two tall pine trees-and went back to contacting our friends on the air. Some, when traveling through the area, would stop by and stay overnight.

Over the fourth of July, we had friends from Berkeley who came for the weekend and we all went way back to Loon Lake to do some fishing. When we got back home on Sunday, the neighbor's (a mile away) two cows had wandered into our vegetable garden and just about cleaned it out (very nice neighbors, though-I never bought another bottle of milk or cream and butter as long as they lived there). I had been telling a ham that we contacted in Idaho what great potatoes we were raising in our garden. He told me that Idaho had the best ones, when I told him about the cows and that I couldn't send one of our potatoes to prove how good they were. About a week later, we had a notice that there was a shipment of something for us at the terminal in Placerville. When we picked it up, it was a 100 pound sack of beautiful potatoes from Idaho.

When my daughter, Lorry "was on the way," these same "great people" really surprised me. They had apparently scheduled a time with Monty after I had gone to bed and made arrangements for a surprise baby shower-as far as I know, the first and only baby shower conducted via ham radio. They had all sent gifts to one of the hams in Sacramento-including coffee and cake, who, in turn, sent them on to Auburn where, without my knowledge of the whole procedure, Monty drove to town and picked them up. Then at nine o'clock one night, Monty said "We have to be on the air tonight so you cannot go to bed early." What a surprise that was! Then we contacted all of them to say our most heartfelt thanks for their wonderful thoughtfulness and their many gifts. All because of the magic of radio and what was the latest in communication at that time.

Then Pearl Harbor and World War II came along and all the amateur radio was shut off the air. My last license renewal was sent to Mont-Eton Mines at Greenwood, California. We didn't even get a chance to tell our friends goodbye over the air. Not only that, the government shut down all mining except for strategic minerals and we had to find other ways to survive. We did! We cut pylon to help the Navy and Sea B's (green berets) take back the South Pacific Islands from Japan.

This all happened beginning in 1927. On my 88th birthday in 1999, my family presented me with a birthday gift that brought me full-circle. I was put on the internet, including ICQ, which is "ham radio" via the internet. What a wonderful world I have lived in!

---

In front of the fireplace at my Georgetown home in 1936, from left to right:  My dad, Burr St. John; me; and my husband, Otto Rudolph Martin dijohn Mont-Eton.
  

Celebrating a 90th Birthday--Click here and join us!

Click above for information on ordering the 44 minute video "In the Tradition of the Early California Vaquero Hackamore Basics, Vol. I"  VHS & DVD Formats Available

Click on this button to go to Articles written by Lorry Wagner   e-mail:  Lorry Wagner     Member of the above AHA Clubs Chat Rooms     copyright 2004 by Lorry Wagner