Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 54

Tempo 2 Section 5 Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, June 9, 1992 droved sinnal The Far Side Reopened Museum of Broadcast Communications to sharpen its focus on radio 1992 UnwenaJ Prew Syndic! By Dan Kening Radio hen the Museum of Broadcast Com-H munications reopens Saturday at its new location in the Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue and Washington Street, radio fans will find an expanded 'i 1 wAfM Hf jZ Edward R. Murrow, Dick Clark and Charles Osgood. Ballots have just been sent to 500 radio executives around the country to nominate the next inductees, who will be honored at a Nov. 15 ceremony at the museum. "We want to make it the equivalent of the Oscars, Emmys and Tony Awards," DuMont said.

The working radio studio at the museum that originates "Golden Age of Radio" guru Chuck Schaden's "Those Were the Days" shows, heard from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays on WNIB-FM 97.1, will be put to better use as well. DuMont's own nationally syndicated radio show, "Inside Politics," heard locally on WBEZ-FM 91.5 at 7 p.m. Thursdays and at 1 p.m. Saturdays, will move to the museum studio June 1 8.

From 8 to 9 p.m. Friday on WBBM-AM 780, Schaden and John Hultman will use the studio to broadcast live from a 1 50-a-ticket black-tie grand reopening fundraiser and sneak preview at the not-for-profit museum. Among the 1,000 people expected to attend are Mayor Richard Daley, Paul Harvey and CNN's Bernard Shaw. (Call 312-629-6000 for ticket information.) On Saturday, the day the free museum reopens to the public, WGN-AM 720's Roy Leonard will be broadcasting from the Hall of Fame studio from 10 a.m. to noon.

DuMont says WLUP-AM 1000 and WXRT-FM 93.1 have expressed interest in doing remote broadcasts from the studio, which is set up for satellite radio transmissions via fiber optic broadcast lines. visibility for the medium. Among the new radio-related exhibits in the museum Radio Hall of Fame will be a replica of a typical 1940s family room, complete with a vintage Zenith radio continuously playing "Golden Age of Radio" programs like "Inner Sanctum" and "The Jack Benny Show." Speaking of Benny, another addition is his famous "vault," which will trigger sirens and flashing lights when opened. And, of course, there will be exhibits and memorabilia from some of the luminaries who have been inducted into the Hall. If there was ever a knock against the museum in its first five years at 800 S.

Wells it was that the primary focus of the exhibits and special programs was on television radio's more glamorous cousin. According to museum founder and president Bruce DuMont, now that the museum has made the move to its new $1 million, location, that imbalance will be addressed. "Now that we have more room, I can guarantee there will be more radio activity at the museum," he said. Formerly the Emerson Radio Hall of Fame, the Radio Hall of Fame was established at the museum last fall. Among past and present greats already inducted into it are Orson Welles, Paul Harvey, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Larry King, Tribune photo by David Ktobucar No kidding From the makers of Coca-Cola come these little-known details from the pop culture: 1.

Fanta name derived from the word "fantasy" 2. Sprite from the elfin character devised by the ad agency 3. Diet Coke known as Coke Light outside the U.S. and Canada 4. Tab from a computer search of 3 and 4-letter words Wortd Features Syndicate Bruce DuMont shows off the new home of the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

For his part, DuMont is thrilled about the museum's move to the Cultural Center. "I'm ecstatic about it, and I'm encouraged that the museum's potential will be realized in our new home," he said. "The new location will allow a greater number of people to experience the museum, utilize its archives and, hopefully, view us as a great place for both education and entertainment." 'It Kctftf meiniini'in iiiii rin am mi yjk-ir ii f.k, i ii.ilr 'wgW'1'''1''''' ti r-irriiriwivn nn s. mhhi-ii'iii -r- Z.m I i rr tut- Tribune photo by John Irvine "We want the monument to remain," says Jim Krakora, 83, who has charge of Saturday's memorial. "We still want it to be a symbol of what America stands for and for how it denounces brutality." Nazis, supervised as owners cleared Terezin away rGbble to complete the destruction of Lidice.

concern camp Lidice Continued from page 1 monument for most of his life. "I know what the Nazis did. I don't know all the details, but I have a general idea. "I like the monument. I just walked over the other day to read it again.

It's interesting to see how people drop by to just sit and to read. They drop off wreaths and flowers. "It makes me proud." Czechoslovak groups in the Chicago area, from places like Berwyn and Cicero, are spending $5,000 to spruce up the monument in time for a 50th anniversary memorial service to be held Sunday. "We have to face reality," says 83-year-old Jim Krakora. He is from Cicero and is in charge of the memorial event.

"It's pretty damned hard to get people interested in observing the 50th anniversary. A lot of the older people who were around when it happened are gone or have drifted away; the younger ones just don't have the sentimental attachment. "But we want the monument to remain. Even though we might not be able to get people excited about it, we still want it to be a symbol of what America stands for and for how it denounces brutality and oppression." The monument was a quick, forcible reply to Nazi atrocities at Lidice in Czechoslovakia. It was unveiled one month to the day after the massacre in an empty cornfield near where it now stands.

"There was no time to waste," Krakora says. "Hitler announced that Lidice had been destroyed and that it would never rise again. We wanted this to be the American response, that Lidice, indeed, does live again, even if it happened to be in this empty field." 'Czech Holocaust' Tens of thousands of people gathered for the dedication. Krakora had driven out from Cicero for the occasion. An empty field near Joliet suddenly became a center for the world's attention.

The years have dulled Krakora's memory of that day, but he does recall that it was hot and sticky and that people stood shoulder to shoulder, sweating in the sun. The main speaker was Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. "We were all outraged and sad," Krakora says. "In essence, Willkie's message was that Lidice had not died." What had happened a month earlier, Krakora now calls the "Czech Holocaust." The Nazis were so proud of what they had done tnat they broadcast from Radio Prague: "All the men of the village have been shot. The women have been deported to a concentration camp, Rocking the By Jerry Vondas ITTSBURGH Dale Oliver's world hangs at the end of a string.

His world is a disc that has earned him a living for 37 years and has established him as a personality among yo-yo enthusiasts across the country. while the children have been sent to appropriate educational centers. The village has been razed to the ground and its name has been abolished." There was something about that the arrogance, the cruelty, the injustice that angered people around the world. The little area in Crest Hill then called Stern Park was the first of many places to change their names to Lidice. The British hung a banner in Parliament that read: "Lidice Lives." Songs were composed honoring the dead of Lidice.

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote an elegy called "The Murder of Lidice" in which she depicted what it must have been like for the people when the Nazis took over their village that dark early morning in June. The Gestapo surrounded Lidice, then went house to house, yelling at the people to take what they could and separating the men from their families. "Now you get up my pretty young wife, How warm in bed soever we lie, And make no sound, my stretching hound, To warn the guard going by That we whisper awake, my love and For the last time in our life." From "The Murder of Lidice," Edna St. Vincent Millay In all, 173 men were dragged from their beds, taken at gunpoint as they got off work from their night shifts, pulled from hospital beds, rounded up and corraled in the cellar of a village farmhouse.

They were miners, steelworkers, shopkeepers, government employees from Prague, many of them young men. Among them were people like the schoolmaster Zdenek Petrik and the parish priest Josef Stembarka, who was offered mercy if he would quiet his congregation. He answered in defiance: "I have lived with my flock and now I will die with it." "And every step of the distance there, Each stone in the road, each man did know, cradle keeps Oliver, 52, a native of Seattle, is a performer and consultant who shows off the magic of yo-yos and teaches kids to use them properly. Oliver, or "Mr. ProYo," as he's known in the yo-yo circuit, was a recent visitor to several elementary schools here.

He brought out his full bag of tricks, which included knocking a coin off 11 -year-old Jermaine Matthew's left ear with a quick arms. Nine of the children from that gym were singled out to be raised as Germans by families in Germany. Then there was the matter of the town itself. Over several days, the Nazis set fire to every building from church to farmhouse, from shop to post of- wnSdSo HLrSS SSLteS SS oners. Graves in the cemetery were dug up and looted.

Trees and bushes were uprooted. A brook that flowed quietly though the village was redirected. The Germans were so thorough that 19 men and 7 women from Lidice families who lived in Prague were also rounded up and killed. Of the 203 women who lived in Lidice, 60 died in captivity. Of the 105 village children, 89 died in the camps.

Ruins plowed under Tractors plowed over the ruins until there was only a barren plain where once there had been Lidice. The men, the women, the children, were gone. The Nazis redrew their maps as though Lidice had never existed. Hitler's orders to wipe out the town had been carried out to the letter. "Now, not a stake was left on a stone, Not the frame of a window sill Where a woman could lean in the dusk alone, Her arms aware of the warmth of the stone, In Lidice, In Lidice And when ye be grown, ye'll be not alone And then will come your day! Remember the murder of Lidice." Memorial to a daughter To visit Lidice today is not unlike visiting Crest Hill and the Lidice there.

There are the birds and the church bells and the small homes, erected on a rise overlooking the site of the original Lidice. From pictures taken before the massacre, Lidice seems to have on the road By the time he was 15, he was a polished performer and had been invited by Duncan representatives to perform in shopping malls and department stores. At age 17, Oliver was married with a child to support and no regular job. "I knew I could make a living by demonstrating yo-yos. I dropped out of high school and went on the road with Duncan." For 18 years, Oliver made his And every alley and doorway where As a carefree boy, not long ago, With boys of his age he would hide and run And shout in the days when everyone Was safe, and free, and school was out Not very long ago And he felt on his face the soft June air, And thought, 'This cannot be Against the wall and shot The roundup was in revenge for the Czechoslovak underground's assassination of the Nazi leader of this area of Czechoslovakia, Gestapo chief Reynard Heydrich, so notorious for his cruelty that he was known as "The Hangman," the man who created the "final solution of the Jewish problem" and who was a personal favorite of Hitler's.

It was Hitler who personally ordered the attack on Lidice. After the roundup, Stembarka and Petrik and the others were brought up from the farmhouse cellar, 10 at a time, stood up against a cold stone wall covered by old mattresses, and executed by a Nazi firing squad. The executioners played Mozart records and drank beer, some getting so drunk that replacements had to be brought in. By noon, not a single male resident over 15 was alive in Lidice. The bodies were thrown into a mass grave dug by Jewish prisoners from the nearby concentration camp of Terezin.

The women and children were herded into the gymnasium of a school at nearby Kladno. There, they were interrogated and separated, the women eventually put aboard trucks headed for what they were told were appropriate relocation centers. They were also told that the children would follow, but by a different route. Most would not see their children again. When mothers resisted, the soldiers fired shots into the ceiling, then ripped the children from their 'Mr.

ProYo' flick of his yo-yo. But his message was clear: Although a yo-yo is considered a toy, he cautioned youngsters that it also is an instrument that can injure if not used properly. Oliver's unusual career started at age 12, when he began watching Duncan Yo-Yo demonstrations in his home of Kansas City, Mo? "I bought a Duncan Yo-Yo. I practiced for hours," Oliver said. frorr the of building includes a sculpted mural of the massacre, small museum kept up by the udice women honors the men and holds artifacts: what was left of the tattered clothes they wore the morning they were killed, their shoes, the helmet lamps they wore in the mines.

On one wall are the small pictures of the men each one who was executed by the Nazis. The women usher guests into a small, darkened auditorium in the basement of the museum. A movie projector is started, and flickering to life on the screen is the film shot by the Nazis of the massacre and the de: struction of Lidice. It was found a German library, filedunder Education and Instruction, The memory lives With the warming of spring in Crest Hill's Lidice, the grass in the small park area is freshly mowed, The stone has been sandblasted from a dirty gray to almost white. It has been patched in several spots where there had been chips, The circular platform on which the monument stands is crumbling in many sections and those are being fixed, A big day is planned for Satur- day, with speeches and bands and the Pledge of Allegiance, but for Jim Krakora, it's disappointing to see how interest in Lidice has died away.

"The 'harshness' of feeling toward the Nazis was there then, 50 years ago," Krakora says. "Now it's gone. But what will never be gone for me is the mem- y. ory 01 Udicc. Edward Menaker is a Chicago free-lance writer.

to get his GED and go to college. "I held various jobs. I sold insurance and cars. But I missed the yo-yo. My heart has always belonged to the yo-yo and to young people.

I wanted a way to get back into action." In 1989, Oliver found a way, beginning an in-school instruction program with the help of corporate sponsors. He estimates that he teaches more than 20,000 youngsters yearly on how to use a yo-yo. Scrlpps-Howard New Service been a quiet and peaceful little town. In a class picture of children in front of their school, the faces stand out, young and fresh. There's a view down on the vil- lage with the church standing as the centerpiece.

In the home of one of the women who survived the concen- tration camp at Ravensbruck to return to her village, a visitor is taken to a small bedroom where everything is as neat as if it had just had been cleaned that morn- ing. There are books on the shelves, small bottles of perfume on the dresser, a heavy handmade comforter on the bed. This is not so much a bedroom as a memorial a place where the child who was killed in the Lidice events can be remembered This could be the room in which she would have slept, read by a small lamp, brushed her hair, put on her makeup, primped for her first big date had she not been gassed by the Nazis. To wander the rolling fields where Lidice once was is to see wooden crosses poking up from the area thought to be where the cemetery was. The crosses are only guesses as to where the old graves had been.

A huge concrete slab is what could not be destroyed of the church foundation. Poking from the ground are some stones from the wall of Horak's farm, where the massacre took place. The area sweeps out quietly below the new Lidice and holds many memories. A tail cross en circled by barbed wire now marks the place where the men were bur- ied in a mass grave. A memorial oo vw living doing around-the-worlds, rocking-the-cradle and walking-the-colorful-disc-dog at malls, car shows, department stores and mom-and-pop grocery stores.

"My wife, Johnny, was patient-she never complained," he said. "We moved every two months. It was hard on the family, but I made a good living." In between gigs or when there was little interest in his talent the industry has had its share of ups and downs Oliver worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Spokane, Wash. It gave him the opportunity.