History on the air

ANNA, Ill. (KFVS) – In the ultimate 60 years, investigators, historians and conspiracy theorists have pored over each millisecond of the day President John F. Kennedy used to be assassinated.

On November 22, 1963, a radio announcer out of Anna used to be already asking questions, and were given some unexpected solutions out of Dallas.

“The fact that little old Don Michel from WRAJ in Anna, Illinois broke the news of Lee Harvey Oswald is pretty cool,” mentioned Don Michel’s son David Michel of Dallas. “The course of the world changed that day.”

While the majority of Americans have been glued to their TV units finding out the newest about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy from CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, people in Union County, Illinois have been tuning their radios to 1440 A.M. WRAJ Radio Anna to listen to what native newsman Don Michel needed to say about it.

“I remember it being sort of, the voice of the town,” mentioned WIBH Radio proprietor Moury Bass. “Anything that happened you could turn the radio on and find out about it, and Don was a big part of that. He was a pioneer.”

By all accounts, no tale used to be too large or too small for Don Michel.

“He always had big whip antennas on his car. He called it the Mobile News Cruiser,” mentioned David Michel. “The fire whistle would go off and everyone’s wondering where’s the fire? Well, dad had a scanner at home and he’d listen and then he and I would jump in his car, and we’d rush out to the scene of the fire.”

“We didn’t have automobile telephones, however we had this two-way radio sitting by way of our audio board, if that factor lit up he’d say, ‘Put me on!” said Bob Smith, an on air personality and podcast host out of Milwaukee who worked with Don Michel at WRAJ from 1973 to 1976.

“Uh, Robert, I need to go on the air. There’s a area fireplace,” mentioned now WDBX radio announcer and “OK Boomer” podcast host Robert Rickman of Carbondale who labored at WRAJ from 1975 to 1976. “I’d say, ‘Okay we now go live and direct to Don Michel on the scene of a house fire in downtown Anna.’ He could report live and direct from wherever he was in Union County.”

David Michel admits his dad’s live shots didn’t always rise to the level of news fit to print, but did go a long way to satisfy community curiosity and kept people reaching for their radios.

“Many times it turned out to be a trash can in an alley, but what do you think everyone did when they heard the fire whistle go off,” mentioned David Michel. “They turned on their radio because they knew in a couple minutes Don Michel was going to be on the scene telling them what’s happening.”

“Sometimes he would beat the police or fire to wherever he was going,” said Bass.

But on the day President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Don Michel actually started his coverage a bit behind.

“He got a call on his lunch break and one of his listeners and customers called him and said, ‘Hey Don, you guys haven’t got anything on the air about this shooting in Dallas,’” said Smith. “So he ran back to the station and put it on.”

Don Michel explained the circumstances in his oral history interview recorded November 22, 2005 by the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza. He said the announcer on duty didn’t realize the significance or the gravity of the sound of the teletype bells incessantly tolling.

“Being a small radio station, it was common in those days there would be one person on duty, the announcer who was doing his noon hour program,” explained Don Michel. “Of course right then the teletype machine was going ding ding ding!”

A flash was sent worldwide by the United Press International wire service after White House reporter Merriman Smith heard the shots while riding just a few cars behind Kennedy in Dealey Plaza in the White House Press pool car, and realized their severity a few moments later.

The UPI flash read: “Kennedy seriously wounded perhaps seriously, perhaps fatally by assassin’s bullet.”

A wire service flash rang 10 to 15 bells. It was an alert so serious it was reserved for only what was considered “earth shaking” news. But flashes were also extremely rare, so Don’s employee didn’t recognize it for what it was.

“He thought it was the phone and ignored it,” Don Michel told the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

“He [Don Michel] did not want people to turn to, I hate to say it, television to get the information on the Kennedy assassination,” said Rickman. “That’s why he took a microphone into the teletype booth and broadcast live bulletins as they were coming over.”

But after the initial flurry of flashes, bulletins and updates the news stopped coming in.

“The teletype went dead after the first few bulletins because they cleared the network so that whatever came in, came in from Dallas,” said Smith. “So he was sitting there with nothing to say, and everybody’s turning on the TV. So he thought, ‘I’m going to call Dallas Police and find out what’s going on.’ Which I never would have thought of working in a tiny radio station back then, but he did! The first time Lee Harvey Oswald’s name was broadcast anywhere was because Don Michel made the call.”

”We had just gotten direct dial telephones,” Don Michel said in his 2005 oral history. “I called the operator and got the number for the Dallas Police Department, and I dialed it.”

The recording, which is now housed in the Baylor University Collections of Political Materials at W.R. Poage Legislative Library in Waco, Texas, is five minutes long, and is packed with information no one outside Dallas P.D. knew at the time.

“Lt. Revill, this is Don Michel from WRAJ in Anna, Illinois calling.”

“Yes?” said Lt. Jack Revill with the Dallas Police Department.

“I’m trying to find out – have you located the assassin of President Kennedy?” Don Michel said.

“Uh, I think so,” said Lt. Revill. “He killed one of our officers and he was on the floor when the president was killed.”

Don Michel used a sheet of old wire copy to frantically take notes, the remnants of which are also now archived at Baylor University’s Collections of Political Materials. The notes recorded history blue chicken scratch, as Dallas police revealed details not even the big wire services or national networks had heard.

“I think he assumed I was from some big Chicago station and was very forthcoming,” Don Michel said with a smile in his oral history interview.

Lt. Revill didn’t have all of the answers to the questions Don Michel was asking, so he offered to transfer the call to one of his fellow officers who had apprehended the accused assassin.

“Hello? Who am I speaking with please?” Don Michel asked.

“This is Detective Taylor,” said Det. E. E. Taylor.

“Did you arrest the person thought to be the assassin?” said Don Michel.

“Yes I did, sir.” Det. Taylor said.

“Do you have his name?” Don Michel inquired.

“Yes,” said Det. Taylor.

Michel’s voice sounds more urgent as he asks, “What is his name?”

“Uh, Lee Harvey Oswald. O-S-W-A-L-D,” said Det. Taylor.

“What is his age?” said Don Michel.

“Twenty-three, or 24 years old,” said Det. Taylor. “That’s by appearance now, I don’t know for sure.”

“I see,” said Don Michel. “White male?”

“Yes,” said Det. Taylor.

“What time did you take him into custody?” Don Michel asked.

“Approximately 2:00.” Det. Taylor answered.

“What time do you have there now?” asked Don Michel.

“3:30,” said Det. Taylor

“So, an hour and a half ago,” Don Michel said.

In his oral history interview, Don Michel said he began to run out of time on his tape, so he wrapped up quickly.

“Detective E.E. Taylor of the Dallas Police department at 3:30 this afternoon that the president was assassinated. Thank you WRAJ News.”

“I recall asking, ‘How do you know he’s the fella?” Don Michel told the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in 2005. “That was never really answered adequately.”

After he hung up the phone, Don Michel immediately played the five-minute recording of his call with Dallas police on the air, breaking news to his listeners in Anna and the surrounding area. Then he passed the news up the wire.

“I turned around and called the United Press International wire service in Chicago to pass the name onto them,” said Don Michel. “As we were talking they began to get the name from another source so I know that I beat the national news.”

The first mention of Lee Harvey Oswald on the national news wires and then globally came several minutes later at 3:48 p.m.

“Who would have known? How history forgets,” said Smith. “It’s amazing.”

Smith first heard the recording when he labored at WRAJ a decade after that decision to Dallas. He mentioned he may just now not imagine what he used to be listening to when Don Michel performed him the tape. Smith later interviewed his former boss about his call to Dallas on his podcast, “The Off Ramp.”

“I was like, ‘Oh my god. Why hasn’t anyone ever heard of this?’ Well, the only people who ever heard it were on WRAJ,” said Smith.

As a 500-watt station, WRAJ had a fairly small coverage area, but for approximately 18 minutes, listeners within 30 miles of WRAJ’s radio tower knew more about President Kennedy’s accused assassin than just about anyone else in the world.

“To me, it was amazing that someone from this small of a town would be the first to put that over the air,” said Bass. “He was one of those guys. He had no fear. He would go up to anybody and if he wanted the answer he’d just ask.”

And Don Michel continued to ask for answers in the days and years that followed, starting on Thanksgiving morning, November 28, 1963, six days after the assassination, and four days following the death of the accused assassin.

“Hello Mr. Klein? Good morning, this is Don Michel with WRAJ News down in Anna, Illinois. You have the sporting goods store that sold the rifle Oswald is alleged to have used, is that right?”

“Yes, I did,” said Milton Klein, owner of Klein Sporting Goods in Chicago.

“Do you know how fast that particular rifle can be fired, sir?” asked Don Michel.

“No, sir, I don’t,” replied Klein.

“It is a bold-action rifle, is it not?” Don Michel asked.

“Yes,” said Klein.

Don Michel also made contact with Abraham Zapruder, the man who captured the only known video to capture the whole of the assassination including the terrible moment the fatal shot met its target.

“You’re the gentleman who took the 8mm movie of the president’s assassination?” said Don Michel.”

“Yes.” Zapruder answered.

“Mr. Zapruder, we’re looking for a little information,” said Don Michel. “Can you tell us, did you measure the time between the shots? Did you play back that footage yourself?”

“I have no comment. It is all on record,” Zapruder answers.

That same Thanksgiving morning, Don Michel made a second call to Dallas police. This time, he spoke with Detective Jim Leavelle, the man in the tan suit who just four days earlier had been escorting Oswald through Police Headquarters when he was shot by Jack Ruby.

“Who am I speaking with?” Don Michel inquires.

“This is Leavelle,” said Detective Jim Leavelle.

“I’m trying to determine whether the ballistics report has been issued on all three bullets that struck President Kennedy and Governor Connelly. Whether or not it has definitely been determined that they all came from the same gun that Oswald is alleged to have used?” Don Michel asked.

Throughout the call, a loud beep periodically sounds announcing that this call, unlike his previous one, was being recorded by not only Don Michel, but police too.

“I don’t know if it’s been released yet, but it’s definitely been established,” said Detective Jim Leavelle.

“So it has been established that they came from the same gun?” Don Michel asks again.

“Yeah,” said Detective Jim Leavelle.

“There was already a question of how many shots could have been fired from one rifle,” explained Don Michel in his oral history recorded by the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. “The authorities jumped to the conclusion that it was Oswald in my opinion, and I don’t think there was basis for assuming he was the lone assassin, and I still don’t.”

Three years after the assassination, Don Michel traveled to New Orleans to speak with people who had met Oswald months before the assassination in the summer before he moved to Dallas, as well as those involved in the Garrison Investigation. He reported what he learned through recorded interviews in a two-part series for his weekly radio program, “Insight.”

Part one includes interviews with reporter Rosemary James who covered the Garrison Investigation extensively for the New Orleans Times–Picayune, and Orleans Parish coroner Nicholas Chetta regarding the death of David Ferrie, a pilot who was alleged by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to have been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

“My general impression was that he was a very discontent young man,” said Mike Kettering, a man who claimed to have worked alongside Oswald at the William. B. Reily & Co. coffee plant in New Orleans. “He was a terse man, but when he did speak to me, he spoke about his dissatisfaction with the United state’s government. His dissatisfaction with John Kennedy, and his general dissatisfaction with life.”

Don Michel additionally interviewed Oswald’s landlords at 4907 Magazine Street in New Orleans in part two of his sequence “Oswald in New Orleans.”

“I don’t believe he was the only one,” said landlord Jessie James Garner. “I believe it was a partnership. I don’t think he was smart enough and capable enough of killing the president by hisself.”

Don Michel’s New Orleans investigations are archived and to be had for on-line listening along side lots of his different “Insight” radio programs in the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University’s Morris Library.

Even long after Don Michel left the radio business, his son said he kept asking questions until he passed away on January 25, 2020 still believing the American public didn’t know what really happened that dark day in Dallas.

“In his last year of life, he was still working on the Kennedy assassination,” said David Michel. “The fact that the truth never came out really bothered him. He died at age 88, but even through age 88 he was doing his best to get to the truth of exactly what happened.”

Don Michel told the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza that he always felt the official investigation into JFK’s assassination didn’t go far enough because investigators never asked for notes or recordings from members of the press like him who’d spoken to a lot of people police never did.

Before his dying, Don Michel donated masses of hours of radio recordings to the archives at SIU and Baylor University, in all probability in the hope any individual else may use his subject matter to proceed in search of solutions.

Copyright 2023 KFVS. All rights reserved.