NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 24, 2002--It seems like Perry Williams, W1UED, can't get enough of ARRL Headquarters. A member of the ARRL Headquarters staff for 40 years, Williams, 74, retired in 1994 as Washington Area Coordinator. Now he's back in a part-time capacity to help catalog the contents of a bank of file drawers filled with archived ARRL documents, letters, and other materials. Some of the materials date back to the very early days of the ARRL and, occasionally, even earlier.
"The first phase is to survey the materials and find out what's here," said Williams who, as we spoke, was poring over some ARRL advertising-related correspondence from the 1920s. Ironically, the very first piece he catalogued after starting his Herculean task in late August was a letter he'd written to Guatemala in 1954, shortly after joining the ARRL staff. "So the first item I picked up was one of my own!" he said.
 Perry Williams, W1UED, tackles yet another drawer full of archival materials from ARRL's past. |
 Williams retrieves a batch of artifacts from one of the 120 or so file drawers inside the "cage" that serves as his office. |
 W1UED takes a breather outside his "cage." [ARRL Photos] |
Over the years, as ARRL moved its headquarters from Hartford to West Hartford and finally to Newington, many archived materials survived. They finally came to rest in the attic--often referred to as "The Penthouse"--of the current ARRL Headquarters building. Not long ago, they were rediscovered by ARRL Pacific Division Director Jim Maxwell, W6CF. Last winter, he and his wife Trudy, KC6NAX, performed what Maxwell called "triage" on some of the archival materials.
Subsequently the ARRL Historical Committee and the Board of Directors agreed that a more formal approach was needed to preserve this aspect of the League's history. The archival materials also were moved to a more secure and commodious location--which Williams refers to as his "cage." Indeed, his new "office" is a fenced-off area within Headquarters' second-floor warehouse area. The wall in front of his desk and computer once was the outside rear wall of ARRL Headquarters prior to its expansion in the late 1970s.
Williams explains that for now, materials are being catalogued in the order they went into the attic, not chronologically. He's looking over the archived materials and building a database. "We will create a searchable index, and move things from one place to another, so like items are in the same place," he explained.
Not all of the materials he encounters are historically significant, Williams concedes. "We saved an awful lot of stuff we didn't need to save," he said. In this category he includes such artifacts as stacks of blank ARRL forms.
Among the other possibly more significant items are agendas for board meetings, committee reports, a proposal for a new "Class D" no-code microwave-only licensing scheme put forth in the post World War II years, questions about regulations and advertising correspondence. And that's just in one of the 120-odd file drawers that are chock full of paper and, occasionally, photographs from decades past.
Williams says he's learned a few interesting bits of ARRL trivia while perusing the various file drawers inside the cage. "I never knew that Hiram Percy Maxim held a commission as a lieutenant commander in the US Naval Reserve," he said. He discovered that another Amateur Radio historical figure, former ARRL Traffic Manager Fred Schnell, W9UZ, was a USNR lieutenant. In 1925, Schnell cruised aboard the USS Seattle and operated under the US Navy-issued NRRL call sign to demonstrate for the US Navy the effectiveness of HF for long-distance communication.
"Probably the most interesting thing to me was when I found this big, thick folder of correspondence from K. B. Warner," Williams said. Warner, W1EH, served as the ARRL's managing secretary from 1919 until his death in 1948. "He was almost hired away from us in 1930 by a broadcasting firm," he said.
Depression-era correspondence that Williams discovered told how Warner and many other ARRL staff members took voluntary cuts in pay to help tide the League over during the tough economic times that followed the 1929 stock market crash. Membership didn't start growing again until around 1932, he said.
Williams also encountered some early information about Paul Segal, W3EEA, who first served as an ARRL Board member in the late 1920s and later as the League's first general counsel. "Paul actually was the architect of the federal preemption policy," Williams explained. Segal, he said, built the foundation for the policy that gives the federal government exclusive authority over radio transmissions and precludes local governments from interceding in the regulation of Amateur Radio. He also was the originator of "The Amateur's Code."
Also stashed away was a photo album from 1962. It shows the current ARRL Headquarters site when W1AW was the only building standing (a huge rhombic antenna occupied the area where the headquarters building now stands). Other photos from the era document the construction of the first part of the current ARRL Headquarters building.
Assisting Williams a few hours a week is Charles Griffen, W1GYR, a retired librarian and history buff who also volunteers at the Vintage Radio & Communications Museum in Windsor, Connecticut.
The archival effort got a boost earlier this
year thanks to a generous donation to the Preservation of Artifacts Fund from
an Amateur Radio couple from Dallas--Barry and Judith Spencer Merrill, W5GN and
KA5PQD. Both are ARRL Life Members. Donations from the Merrills and others will
continue the effort to conserve valuable books, papers and artifacts that
define the history of Amateur Radio.
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