Mr. Fix-it on the FM dial

John Graham keeps radio on for classical music lovers around the world

ROLESVILLE -- As a boy growing up in Raleigh in the 1950s, John Graham would sneak his transistor radio into bed at night and listen, thrilled at the prospect of picking up a station hundreds of miles away.

There was something magical, exciting yet comforting, about hearing the on-air personalities and the rock 'n' roll they played from afar. It made him feel connected to Chicago or Atlanta, the source of this after-midnight music.

"That was the other end of the world," he says.

Now 64, Graham long ago gave up his transistor but not the voices-from-beyond experience of radio. Only now he's on the sending end as an engineer at WCPE, the listener-supported radio station that's heard in Antarctica, Russia and Japan as well as its own backyard.

Listeners on all seven continents tune in via the airwaves, the Web and satellite for Brahms, Beethoven and Britten. It's Graham's job to keep the technical doodads running, the music streaming on the Internet and the signal transmitting from the 1,200-foot tower. And because he works for the most cost-conscious boss since Milburn Drysdale, it's Graham's job to do it on the cheap.

Equal parts tech geek and regular guy, Graham is having the time of his life in this start-over career as the transmitter room's unsung Mr. Fix-it.

"I love my work," he says one recent Wednesday at the Rolesville station. He strolls through the building that houses the transmitters, generators and processing gear built out of free surplus parts by Deborah Proctor, the station's founder and general manager. In the tower room, the machinery hums and whirs along with a string quartet coming from a 20-year-old playback speaker atop a big metal hulk.

Graham is not the sort of engineer a station manager recruits through a headhunter. Just imagine the want ad: "Engineer needed for classical music station that never goes off the air (Lord willing), holidays included. Must have working knowledge of analog technology, the Internet, broken air conditioners, transmitters, translators and satellite uplinks. Must be able to convert outdated, hand-me-down equipment deemed unfixable into items that can be used by a station heard around the world. Ideal candidate must take pride in work and view job as labor of love."

Nope, a station manager has to luck into an employee like Graham -- "the old kind of hands-on radio guy," as Proctor puts it. "Someone who is more like a 1970s, 1980s guy who, rather than throwing away something that doesn't work, is smart enough to know how to fix it," Proctor says.

In other words, Graham.

Running on volunteers

With his thick mustache and thinning gray hair, dark pleated slacks, functional brown shoes and casual shirt with -- of course -- rolled-up sleeves, Graham is the poster man for the no-nonsense, frugal attitude that drives WCPE. The station may play highbrow classical music, but the people at WCPE aren't snacking on fancy wine and cheese in the break room (unless you'd like to donate some fancy wine and cheese, that is).

WCPE, which is one year shy of its 30th birthday, prides itself on being 100 percent listener-supported -- no grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, no university support, no taxpayer dollars. The place runs on 50 volunteers -- 200 at pledge time -- who donate about 7,000 hours every year.

"It's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen in show business," says outreach director Curtis Brothers, who probably calls WCPE "show business" from working as a Broadway stagehand for many years. "You do art properly, without having to sell your soul. And that's what we get, and it's the soul of our volunteers that do it."