Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: WMHD

  • Living life after running out of things to graduate from

    Upon my younger son’s graduation from college, I reflect on how real life offers no grades and no graduation day, and how to adjust to that.

  • Briefly back on the “radio”

    I got to help relaunch WMHD, the (now online) radio station of my alma mater.

  • How to make a bumper sticker in the 1980s

    I found a couple old bumper stickers from my college radio days. I designed them myself, by hand, as we all had to in the 80s.

  • From the archives: WMHD-FM Terre Haute, 1986-87

    I was 20 and thrilled. So many children dream of being a fireman or a policeman when they grew up. Not me. I wanted to be the voice on the radio. And look: here I am! Microphone before me, Sennheiser HD40s hanging around my neck, my finger on the turntable’s go button. Let’s do this!…

  • Living life after running out of things to graduate from

    As my son prepares for his senior year at Purdue, I reflect on how real life offers no grades and no graduation day, and how to adjust to that.

  • Knowing when to quit

    I think our bodies and minds just know when it’s time to quit something we’re doing. But often it’s hard to honor that.

  • The Electric Breakfast

    I was the morning DJ on WMHD in the early 90s, and that experience was much like blogging is for me now.

  • Breaking the news of Space Shuttle Challenger

    It was my generation’s “I remember where I was when I heard the news” moment: the day Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in the air after launch. It happened 30 years ago today. My “where was I” story is a little unusual — I was on the radio, and I broke the news to our listeners. That makes…

  • Rose-Hulman, Spring, 1986

    What was I doing on the roof of my residence hall that spring day my freshman year of college? Nothing more nefarious than taking photographs. I’m sure the administration would not have approved of me being up there, but when an upperclass friend with an illicit building master key bade a few of us come, we went.…

  • It’s a shame what’s happened to radio

    I signed off the air for the last time 20 years ago tomorrow, capping a nine-year side career on the radio. People still sometimes ask me if I miss being a disk jockey, and for a long time I always wistfully answered yes. But not anymore. It’s not that I would be rusty as heck after all these…

  • A radio station that lost its will

    Last November I shared with you that my alma mater’s radio station, WHMD at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, had shut off its transmitter and gone Internet-only. Last week’s Indiana Radio Watch, a weekly e-mail digest of statewide radio happenings, reports that Rose-Hulman is selling WMHD to crosstown Indiana State University for $16,465, to be a companion…

  • Death of a radio station

    Word reached me the other day that my college alma mater’s radio station, WMHD at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, is permanently shutting down its transmitter and will only stream on the Internet from now on. I guess it was inevitable. I don’t think college kids really listen to the radio anymore. That…