Word: ummerson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Upon submitting his senior thesis in April 1943, an elated Harold F. Van Ummerson 44 ran down to the Harvard radio station, inspired to do something unusual. For the next three hours, he played all of Beethoven's symphonies in numerical order, changing the 78 RPM records every three or four minutes...
Early the next morning, Van Ummerson left the station and walked down to the Charles River, where he threw a copy of the inspirational thesis off a bridge...
...began one of WHRB's oldest traditions, the musical "orgy," Van Ummerson is still remembered as one of the station's great innovators, and the marathon orgies he inspired have become a Reading Period standard at the station, focusing on more than just classical music and ranging from live folk music to reggae...
...week after his historical broadcast, Van Ummerson was drafted, and left Cambridge without knowing about the tradition he started. "The first I heard about [the orgies] was in an issue of the alumni bulletin in about 1960," he says...
Musical programs concentrated on classical music, but also included a great deal of jazz. In 1944, about a year after the first orgy, Richard L. Kaye '46 broadcast the second classical music orgy, which he called The Harold Ferdinand Van Ummerson Memorial Program...