The Keegan School of Broadcasting also offered classes in radio equipment repair.
Dear Vance: Looking through old family papers, I discovered that my father attended the Keegan School of Broadcasting. Where was this establishment, and what happened to it? — M.A., Memphis.
Dear M.A.: When a Memphis electric engineer named Hoyt Wooten obtained this city’s first radio broadcasting license in 1922, he might as well have discovered a gold mine. He opened a studio in the basement of the Peabody with the call letters WREC — for Wooten Radio & Electric Company. Oh sure, he had to rent space, buy equipment, and pay a small staff, but even after those expenses, money poured in from advertisers eager to have their products broadcast over the air to thousands of potential customers.
Wooten made so much money that he built a Spanish-style mansion in Whitehaven (complete with the world’s largest private bomb shelter, large enough for 40 of his closest friends) and converted a U.S. Navy minesweeper into the 100-foot Elbaroda, the largest yacht ever seen on this part of the Mississippi.
Americans were mesmerized by radios. No longer did they need to purchase tickets, dress up, and drive to a theater or auditorium for entertainment. By purchasing a set and rigging an antenna, they could enjoy a world of music, follow the exploits of The Lone Ranger, and listen to the news, all with the turn of a dial.
photograph courtesy wikipedia / public domain
Johnny Cash in 1955, at the beginning of a legendary career.
Other stations quickly followed Wooten’s example. By the 1940s and ’50s, Memphians could choose from WMC, WMPS, WDIA, WHBQ, WLOK, and dozens of others.
Over the years, Keegan’s school trained hundreds of students, surely none more famous than a fellow from Dyess, Arkansas, called Johnny Cash.
All of these stations required entertainers and announcers, and they also demanded a constant supply of equipment and people trained to operate and repair everything. City directories in the 1940s listed stores where listeners could purchase radios (with establishments like Mulford Jewelers even offering the latest models), businesses that stocked repair parts (tubes were notoriously short-lived), and — here I’m finally getting to your question, M.A. — specialized schools that trained radio technicians and broadcasters.
If you’ve paid attention, you’ve noticed that I’ve been focusing on the 1940s, because that’s when Frank J. Keegan opened the Keegan School of Broadcasting. Looking through back issues of local newspapers, I had hoped to find major stories about the school’s opening, descriptions of its lovely campus, and thrilling accounts of its football team’s victories against rival schools.
But it wasn’t that kind of school, of course. Instead, the first mentions of the Keegan School of Broadcasting show up in 1945 as classified ads, announcing that the new establishment offered classes to “men and women, day and night, for staff announcers, disc jockeys, writers, and operators.” Working out of only a few rooms in an office building at 71 Monroe, Keegan promised, “Our students get good radio station jobs.”
I turned up only one photo of this establishment, and as you can see, the school apparently offered classes in radio repair, because that’s what seems to be going on here. The photo is dim, but it shows a half-dozen men hunkered over all kinds of electronic gadgets. A banner on the wall declares, “If our students haven’t learned, our instructors haven’t taught.” Also visible: lots of “High Voltage” signs.
So who was Frank Keegan? Digging through old archives didn’t tell me as much as I’d hoped. Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1914, by the 1930s he was living in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he met a former Memphian, Frances Earley. Frank and Francis were married in Little Rock in 1938, and the couple moved to the wife’s hometown. Memphis city directories show the Keegans living here in 1940s on Oakley, while Frank worked for the Fisher Aircraft Division, assembling bombers during World War II at a former automobile plant. Maybe that’s where he gained experience in radio operations and electronics.
He certainly stayed busy. When the war ended in 1945, he took part in his first radio venture, joining other investors to open a station called WLVH, which newspapers described as “an intercommunicating system used for the entertainment of patients at the Veterans Hospital on Lamar.”
That same year, he opened Keegan’s School of Radio at 2019 Union and soon added training in television. His ads urged students to “Get into Radio and Television!” and declared, “Keegan’s School of Broadcasting is now the most completely equipped radio school in the United States,” a remarkable claim, if you ask me. “We offer complete courses in radio and television theory, radio writing, and radio announcing.”
The school was obviously successful. By late 1949, Keegan signed a five-year lease for a 6,000-square-foot building at 207 Madison, just two blocks east of Main. The new facility included a radio control room, two lecture rooms, and three studios.
With all their expertise in radio, it only made sense that Keegan’s students should have their own show. In 1950, they began airing the Memphis Radio Workshop on WMPS. The shows promised to be “produced, directed, and enacted by students of the Keegan School of Broadcasting and Television.”
By 1952, Keegan expanded his enterprise, operating a commercial radio station, KFAK, which he promoted as “The Good Music Station” — implying, it seems, that other stations here played bad music. That operated out of a tiny studio at 215 Madison, next door to his school. Within a year, though, he sold KFAK for $50,000 to “a group of prominent Memphians,” which included professional golfer Cary Middlecoff. The new ownership group, called the Chickasaw Broadcasting Company, changed the call letters to WCBR and moved the studio to the Exchange Building, overlooking Court Square.
photograph courtesy Everett collection / dreamstime
The Lauderdales gathered around their new Philco to hear the latest installment of Life with the Lauderdales. The show ran for only six weeks.
Over the years, Keegan’s school trained hundreds of students, surely none more famous than a fellow from Dyess, Arkansas, called Johnny Cash. In a 1985 interview, broadcast as Coming Home: A Rockin’ Reunion, Cash recalls that he moved to Memphis and took a job “at a place called Home Equipment Company, trying to sell refrigerators and washing machines.”
He continues, “All I ever wanted to do was sing, but I couldn’t get a break. So I entered radio announcing school in Memphis — Keegan’s School of Broadcasting. I’d been going there five months, half-time [and] finally got Sam Phillips to listen.”
That was in March 1955. I suppose it seems obvious to say, “And the rest is history.”
In 1957, the school changed its name to Keegan Technical Institute. Their newspaper ads, in the past so matter-of-fact, became downright strange. One, headlined “When Your Children Leave Home,” rambled on for a half-page about how a kid’s parents “don’t usually understand their deep-down mixed emotions of pride, joy, fear, regret, anticipation, and hope … for teenage youth has yet to learn the difference between day-dreaming and accomplishing.”
Where are you going with this, Mr. Keegan? Well, after declaring that “we at Keegan have learned to help control their emotions,” the copywriters finally declared: “Talk to Keegan about your child’s future in electronics, in radio-television, or with the airlines.”
Wait — airlines? Yes, it seems that Keegan had begun an “airline training division” and a Commercial Appeal story noted that Southern Airlines “hired almost the entire graduating class of the Keegan Technical Institute.” An ad for “Airline Training in Memphis” was seeking “Women 18 to 36, married or single” to be taught by “experienced, well-known former Memphis airline personnel.” After graduation, Keegan would offer free job placement service as “hostesses, ticket agents, reservations, and communications.”
Radio, television, and now airlines. There’s no telling how far Keegan might have gone with his ventures. In 1964, however, he sold everything to a national chain, Allied Technical Schools, “widely known in the field of refrigeration, air conditioning, and heating service training.” That seems quite a leap from radio and television broadcasting — and even airline hostesses.
The Keegans left Memphis for West Lafayette, Indiana, where Frank became an electronics technician for Purdue University. He passed away in 1979 at age 64, with his obituary in Indiana’s Journal & Courier hailing him as a “radio pioneer.” Frances died in 2003; in her last years she had been working as a secretary. They are buried together in Grandview Cemetery outside West Lafayette.
And the Keegan School of Broadcasting? Except for the image here, I never located another photo of the establishment — or Frank and Frances, for that matter. There’s no trace of the school today. Most of that block on Madison came down in 2000 for AutoZone Park.
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