WFHR Radio celebrates 85 years of local broadcasting and community service to Wisconsin Rapids

It started with local results from the 1940 presidential election and continues to this day with community information and conversation.

Radio listeners around Wisconsin Rapids tuned their dials to a new station on Election Night 1940, waiting to hear if Wendell Wilkie would deny President Franklin Roosevelt an unprecedented third term.

It was not the first time their radios gave them what we now call “the news,” but it was the first time they heard local news — local election results, faster than ever before. 

WFHR Radio founder and namesake William F. Huffman, the owner and publisher of the local newspaper, had been trying for ten years to get approval for a broadcast license and begin operations. Now successful — complete with an organ and a grand piano in the studio — Huffman christened the station with a personal dedication that had his hometown in mind.

“The public acceptance merely confirms our ideals of public service, because the station is not mine, and it is not the station of the staff. It is the station of the people of the area. Many are volunteering services and talents, happy in the opportunity to furnish information and entertainment to their fellow citizens.”

WFHR staff members Pamela Hilke and James Malouf sporting vintage WFHR jackets. (Photo by WFHR staff)

On August 20, the station got a jump start on kicking off the celebration of its 85th anniversary. Waiting for November would have put a chill into the parking lot party that invited the public to take part in games, visit tables hosted by local nonprofit groups, and indulge in food trucks and a dessert contest. UpNorthNews participated by bringing its statewide radio show, Mornings with Pat Kreitlow, to the studio for a live broadcast, including an interview with James Malouf, longtime host of the Rapids Report and other local programs.

“They have supported this station for 85 years, and we want to do right by them,” Malouf said of the community. ”There’s a lot of people that would maybe want to do this job. We get to be here, so [we] appreciate that. I [want] to keep going, what they started in those original people.”

Malouf is referring to a lineage of WFHR announcers over the years, some of whom are pictured on plaques from the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association. Listeners still like to share stories about Arnie Strope, Jack Genarro, George Frechette, Carl Hilke, Milt Steele, and many others.

“I don’t know how you walk past that and not get motivated, not get inspired,” Malouf said. ”And I get to do this for a living. I walk in every morning and I see those plaques and I’m, I kid you not, every morning, I see those and it’s a motivator.”

The station is a member of the Wisconsin Rapids family and even feels like family when you enter the lobby and are greeted by Pam Hilke, who first started working at the station in 1977. (She and Carl married in 1985, and worked together until his death in 2019.) Or if not Pam, then perhaps it’s Melissa, Laura, Katie, Seth and Beth, or anyone else who takes the station’s legacy of hometown service to heart.

It’s a station that has had several owners over the years — and has been part of the Civic Media family since August 1, 2022 — but whether they’re broadcasting news, talk, high school sports, or the Rapids Report on WFHR (97.5 FM and 1320 AM) or country music on WIRI (105.5 FM), the stations always sound like they’re owned by everyone who lives in the self-described Heart of Wisconsin.