Every once in a while, a story lands in your inbox that reminds you why radio mattered, and still does. Not ratings, not formats, not playlists generated by committee, but a human voice in the dark, keeping someone company when it counts.
Tom Mulligan has been a frequent guest on PR After Hours and a longtime friend, which means I’ve heard him tell good stories before. This one is different. It’s quieter. More generous. Set on Christmas Eve, 1976, back when AM radio ran on vinyl, pay phones, bad cars, worse shifts, and the quiet understanding that someone, somewhere, might be listening.
What follows is about a young broadcaster pulling a brutal holiday shift, a dusty box of forgotten records, and an unplanned act of connection that mattered more than anyone realized at the time. It’s about how small kindnesses stack up, how presence can be a gift, and how the best moments in media are often the ones that were never supposed to happen at all.
I’m grateful Tom shared it here. I think you will be too.
—Alex
South Bend, Indiana. December 24th, 1976. 23°
If you worked in AM radio back then, you knew the exact date, time, and temperature. It’s part of the job. For college kids trying to break into broadcasting, the job also meant the worst shifts, especially during the holidays. Mine, that year, was from 10 PM on Christmas Eve to Noon on Christmas Day—fourteen hours.
Mom was not happy. I had to leave her famous Christmas Eve spaghetti dinner to take a shift at WBOW, your home for adult contemporary music in Terre Haute, Indiana, five hours from her house.
I had an old Ford that was beginning to crumble. Four coats of white refrigerator enamel held it together. No heater, no radio, the chassis was broken, and the tires were shot.
No problem.
Gas stations were not 24/7 in those days. The one I was sure would be open wasn’t. Using the pay phone, I called Joe “Cokie” Heffelmire, a fraternity brother who lived nearby. Nicknames were required in Indiana at the time. With a name like Tom Mulligan, mine was “Stu.”
“Cokie, man, I know it’s Christmas Eve, but I’m nearby and need gas.”
“I’m surprised you got this far in that piece of junk. My dad just topped off the fuel storage for the tractor.” I asked him for directions, and as he gave them to me, I heard him talking to someone in the background. He came back and said, “Mom is expecting you for Christmas Eve dinner. Wear a clean shirt.”
“I can’t stay. I’ve got to get to work,” I told him with a shameful amount of self-pity.
By the time I got there, another friend of mine who lived nearby was already there—Bob “Round Man” Merriman, a nickname that never made sense for the athlete he was. His description of my car was, “Seriously?” My collection of interrupting families on Christmas Eve had now grown to three.
Cokie filled the tank but wouldn’t accept any money for it. So, I gave him my copy of an album no one had heard of yet. I got one of the early releases from work because the station manager didn’t think it would go anywhere—Rumors, by Fleetwood Mac. I apologized for interrupting everyone and got going.
It was dark, and nothing was open in Terre Haute. The car stalled as I pulled into the parking lot with 30 minutes to spare. It was 7°. I called my mom to let her know I was safe. Round Man called the station to be sure I knew that I was an idiot for trying it at all.
The guy I replaced at the station had a head start on his holiday. He was REALLY happy to see me, forgot my name, and the food in the break room was gone. I locked the doors, shut down all the lights like the boss told me to, and “took the board.”
There were only two things to do:
Play Christmas music. Thirteen songs, played in order and repeated every two hours.
Stay awake.
It was exactly midnight, December 25th, 1976.
There are only a few themes to holiday music then: snow, being in love, gifting, Santa, not being in love, and being at home. After 1994, a new one emerged called Mariah Carey. I’ll be Home for Christmas sent me to a perfect temper tantrum. It wasn’t enough that I had to fight an old wreck with no heat and impose on friends to work on Christmas Eve for $2.35 an hour; now I was stuck with the same 13 songs, seven times. It just wasn’t fair.
You can always build a rationalization when you need one. I had to stay awake, didn’t I? Convinced that I was only doing my duty by fighting off the fatigue, I started digging around in the oversized closet we generously called the music library. Under the dust was a large box on the top shelf in the back. I almost dropped it because it was stuck for who knows how long. Inside were a lot of old vinyl records. A few had covers, but most of them were in brittle white paper sleeves. Some were 78 RPM, with labels in languages I couldn’t understand. At the time, 45s were our stock-in-trade. The rest were at 33⅓ RPM.
I could play them. No one was listening. Why not?
I recognized a cover for a collection put together by Firestone. It was the same one my dad had. If I had to work all night, I thought I deserved to play this one. I was supposed to play Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” again, but skipped it.
In the box were the usual: Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, and Burl Ives of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer fame. How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas were only a few years old in those days. I was off to a good start. I dove into the old music. The sheer volume of music in a single box seemed endless. There was classical, choral, country, jazz, and rock. They were in English and Spanish, French and Italian.
I played everything.
I confess that I did not report the weather like I was supposed to at some point. I may or may not have done an FCC-required station identification. Interrupting the Berlin Philharmonic performance of The Nutcracker Suite is a sin. The FCC never came looking.
I don’t know what time it was when I thought I heard the phone ring. Sure enough, the little red light was blinking.
“WBOW, this is Tom,” was how the boss wanted the phone answered.
“Can I make a request?” said the caller with obvious fatigue.
“Sure! What would you like?” I asked.
“Silent Night,” she said a little weakly.
“Do you want that in English or German? I’ve got both.”
“Whatever you can do.”
“Sure thing,” I assured her, and she hung up.
After I played them both, she called back and asked me to repeat an obscure song I’d played earlier: “Here Mid the Ass and Oxen Mild,” a beautiful English version of an old French hymn from the late 13th century.
“You have great taste,” I told her.
She said she had been listening on and off throughout the night when she could.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked.
“No, I’m working. It’s been a little rough.”
“Why’s that?”
When she replied, I was shamed into silence.
“I am a nurse in the emergency room at the hospital.”
Everything went quiet.
She asked, “Are you still there? The music stopped.”
I hadn’t noticed the dead air. “Yes. Sorry. Hey, would it be OK if you didn’t hang up?” I stammered.
She answered, “OK, but why?”
“How about you pick the rest of the music?”
“Are you kidding?”
“What would you like next?”
The phone line remained open for the next few hours. Other people started to pick up the phone with their requests. We talked about the old music I found, and they picked whatever they wanted. No matter how new, old, or obscure, I found it and played it. All of it. Even Elvis.
As her shift ended, she came back to the phone to say goodbye. I thanked her and wished her Merry Christmas as the next shift came on. It was only then that she told me her name.
“Lori,” she said. “I’ve got to go now and get some sleep. I am on again tonight.” The line went dead.
At sunrise, the children would be up, so I chose songs about Santa, snowmen, and one about a hippopotamus. For the last two hours of the shift, I played the thirteen songs in order. They sounded incredible.
It was exactly noon, December 25th, 1976.
I was sure I’d lose that job, but it was never mentioned.
When I got back to the fraternity house to enjoy a Christmas dinner by Chef Boyardee, the house was empty. I opened the trunk to get my stuff and found a cardboard box. In it, my mom had packed spaghetti with all the garlic bread and salad I could eat. Next to it was more food Cokie had snuck in when I wasn’t looking.
If Hallmark were writing this, “A couple of weeks later, Lori and I found each other, ran to each other in slow motion, in beautiful snow, and found love.” You can have that ending if you want.
I never knew or met her, but I hope she has had better Christmas Eves ever since. There is a hidden yet insistent generosity that moves through us. If Cokie hadn’t given me the gas, Lori wouldn’t have had the music. All those people would have been stuck in the emergency room on a bitterly cold night. The small thing I could do for them is the best gift I ever had.
In finding my old friends, Cokie never thought it was any big deal, and Roundman had forgotten altogether. . So small a gesture it was. I am happy to report that Cokie still has that album. And Roundman still thinks I am an idiot.
It would be another 15 years until the first Home Alone movie came out. 30 until the Elf on the Shelf began to terrorize the children. Each year, there has been a competition between the standout artists and voices of their time to add to the treasure.
All end up in a dusty box.
Merry Christmas.
Stu
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