Contact:
Kent W. Trimble, K9ZTV
President, Mid-MO Amateur Radio Club
573/893-5251
k9ztv@socket.net


While preparing a talk on Morse Code for members of the Mid-MO Amateur Radio Club, current president Kent W. Trimble discovered that a local Jefferson City teenager had figured prominently in the early history of American radio. Thus began a three year research into the life and achievements of Willis Porter Corwin, 9ABD.

During the night hours of January 27, 1917, eighteen year old Willis received and re-transmitted three Morse Code messages which became the first successful one-way transcontinental relay of formal message traffic in the history of American radio. Two weeks later he duplicated that feat by participating in the first two-way relay in which a message, originating on the east coast, was relayed by successive amateur radio stations to the west coast and a reply received back on the east coast just 80 minutes later, an unheard of feat in those days.

Willis Corwin is Jefferson City's first-known amateur wireless operator. His call sign, 9ABD, was one of the earliest assigned by the federal government and appears prominently in radio journals of that era. Building the entire station himself from radio circuits gleaned from magazines and his own genius, Willis’ radio shack was located in an enclosure at the base of a wooden tower he constructed to elevate his Marconi-style antenna array at the rear of his parents' residence at 117 E. McCarty Street. The Exchange Bank parking lot, located immediately behind First Presbyterian Church, occupies the site today.

Upon graduation from Jefferson City High School on May 14, 1917, in a class of thirty-five, Corwin responded to pleas from the United States government for experienced radio operators to serve in the military. He was the first man from Jefferson City to enlist in World War I where he served with the United States Naval Reserves as Chief Electrician (Radio) in France and as wireless operator aboard the troop ship taking him to Europe. Corwin also served as chief radio operator for a time in Navy installations at Great Lakes, Illinois, and Manistique, Michigan. Trimble said the local radio club has purchased a Commemorative Brick in his memory for the “Walk of Honor” at Veteran’s Plaza.

After the war, Corwin built and installed Jefferson City's first commercial AM broadcast station, WOS, in the dome of the state capitol for the Missouri Department of Agriculture. He later established radio station KSD in St. Louis for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he did pioneering work on wire-photo transmission years before it became a reality.

By the age of thirty, Willis’ health had deteriorated such that the last twenty-nine years of his life were spent at the Veterans Administration Home in Knoxville, Iowa. He died there at the age of sixty on January 27, 1959, exactly forty-two years to the day after the historic transcontinental record. He is buried in the Jefferson City National Cemetery just nine blocks east of where he grew up.

Prominent in 19th century political and social circles, Willis’ father, Charleton B. Corwin, founded the Daily Capital News in the early 1900s. He also operated the C.B. Corwin News Agency offering “Subscription and Wholesale Newspapers and Magazines” for many years at 118 Wall Street, to the rear of the Corwin home.

To observe the 90th anniversary of the “First Transcontinental Relay,” the Mid-MO Amateur Radio Club has scheduled three events for Saturday, January 27, 2007, to which the public is invited.

At 10 a.m. a short wreath-laying ceremony will be held at Willis Corwin’s grave in the Jefferson City National Cemetery located in the block just west of Clark Avenue between East McCarty and Miller streets. Military rites will be rendered by the Honor Guard team from Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1003.

At 11 a.m. a granite plaque will be dedicated at the site of the Corwin home by Mayor John D. Landwehr assisted by surviving members of the Corwin family, and other dignitaries. This property is now part of the Exchange Bank parking lot immediately behind First Presbyterian Church.

At 2 p.m. the Mid-MO Amateur Radio Club will set up their transmitters and receivers inside First Presbyterian Church to begin a twenty-four hour Special Event operation; radio contacts will be made with as many other amateur radio stations as possible throughout the world. Morse Code will be extensively used in addition to voice operations. The public is invited to observe their station activities from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday. Entrance to the church should be made through the rear (west) door off the Exchange Bank parking lot.