At Large in Ballard by Peggy Sturdivant

Last month I drove across Lake Washington on the I-90 floating bridge and followed mysterious directions regarding a hilly driveway and a large flagpole. As directed I took an elevator to the fifth floor, even though I didn't know if I was in the right building. By some miracle, within the hum and shudder of the equipment inside T-Mobile headquarters, there was a suite for Sandusky Radio, and in a small studio to the rear Doug Warne was recording The Scandinavian Hour.

Doug Warne and his radio partner Ron Olsen have been recording The Scandinavian Hour every week since 1959. Listed by Historylink.org as the longest running local ethnic radio program, Doug and Ron produce and deliver a community bulletin board, interviews and Scandinavian music every Saturday morning to their listening audience. As Warne told me when we met, it was easier to move the show between stations over the years than it was to train the listeners to follow them.

Doug Warne cold-called me in September to ask if I would contribute a story for their 42nd annual Christmas Special. The Scandinavian Hour currently broadcasts on AM 1150, KKNW on Saturday mornings from 9-10 a.m. The Christmas Special is actually two special broadcasts; one on Christmas Eve, the other on Christmas Day.

I was in and out of the Renton studio within five minutes but Doug Warne agreed to meet in Ballard so I could learn more about how he and Ron Olsen had come to produce the Scandinavian Hour for forty-eight years. Both Doug and Ron graduated from Ballard High School, although they didn't meet until a Scandinavian social event after graduation. In 1958 Doug was delighted to discover The Scandinavian Hour having just returned from the University of Oslo. But at the end of the broadcast, the host announced it was the final show. A college student had been hosting the program but was moving on to a newspaper job upon graduation. After calling to protest the program's demise, despite having no background in radio, Doug was soon hosting. He had recruited his friend Ron Olsen, in part because of his ability to provide Scandinavian music, and so the program was saved. Doug makes the subsequent forty-eight years sound like a breeze - perhaps because he and Ron are both semi-retired and find it so much easier to juggle the radio program now than they did while working full-time and raising their families.

Doug came to contact me because he'd read the At Large column; although he's not a subscriber. The Ballard News Tribune subscription is a gift to his mother Dorothy Nelson Warne, a near-lifelong Ballardite, now living at The Hearthstone by Greenlake. His mother was one of the original Adams Girls from the Ballard elementary school and she will be 99 years old this month. Doug's mother saves The Ballard News Tribune for him; he doesn't have the heart to tell her when he's already read it elsewhere.

Every time that we've spoken on the phone, Doug has literally been in the middle of something - a cave in the Southwest or the Ballard Bridge. His smooth radio voice always sounds enthused and energetic. In person Doug seems more calm but clearly very engaged in activities - planning the annual Christmas trip, meeting up with his daughter and granddaughter, taking his mother for drives, attending the Commercial Club dinners, serving on the Board of several Scandinavian organizations, tending to investments, and of course, keeping The Scandinavian Hour ticking along with Ron Olsen. Doug recalls that his wife Lena always said that if he put as much energy into other enterprises as he did the program, he'd be very wealthy.

We met at Nervous Nellie's, just two blocks north from his grandmother's original home in Ballard. His Swedish mother and Norwegian father met on a blind date at yet another Scandinavian Social event just as he later met his future wife Lena when she was a Swedish exchange student. After she returned to Sweden he attempted to woo her long-distance. Finally he went to Sweden to make his case in what his radio partner Ron Olsen coined a begging mission. Nonetheless he succeeded and they were married in her hometown of Eskilstuna. Doug retired several years ago from teaching; as a Junior High School teacher he won most of the top awards in his profession, Golden Apple, Christa McAuliffe, State Teacher of the Year. Besides his family, his other passion has always been The Scandinavian Hour. As he said, "I would have done it for free, but we needed to eat."

Inquiring about the future of The Scandinavian Hour felt like asking Doug Warne about his own mortality. He and Ron doubt that their own children will take over the radio program. At present it strikes them as easier to do it themselves than to train anyone to take over. There will be time later to worry about program archives and their legacy but for now, after forty-eight years without a missed program, they have mastered the art of keeping the program afloat, even in "dicey times."

Doug pointed out for me where his wife was born on a map of Sweden. Between his call in September and our meeting in November, Doug has quietly lost Lena, his wife of 40 years, to cancer. Now he's trying to stay even busier than usual. He has a new granddaughter, there's the extra work of preparing the Christmas specials, his mother's birthday approaching...and always The Scandinavian Hour to produce. Refusing to let the flame go out on the long-running weekly program, Doug Warne has amassed a different kind of wealth, and he is wealthy indeed.

Peggy's e-mail is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com. She writes additional pieces for the Seattle P.I.'s Ballard Web town at http://blog.seattlepi.