Frank Harden – Legendary Harden and Weaver Show – WMAL AM630

Our Town with host Andy Ockershausen - Homegrown History

Frank Harden on "The Senator's" 'Forward March!' one morning - "That’s right and I think one of the funny things that happened there was the Senator always gave the forward march command and one day we got a call from a representative who said 'When the Senator said "Forward March!", I was stopped at a stoplight! I put the pedal to the metal and took off!'" Frank Harden, Legendary Harden and Weaver Show, WMAL AM 630 A Ockershausen: This is a very special day for Our Town. Frank, we didn't coin that name, it's Our Town. That's the suburbs and everything we grew up with, but it's so special to see Frank Harden and to have a chance to talk to Frank because I lived through those years and the best years of my life. I want to correct part of what he said in a book. That is about the size of the Harden and Weaver audience. I would tell you, Frank, at one time, Harden and Weaver had one out of every four listeners in the Greater Washington area, that is stupendous! Nobody's ever come close to that, even the Super Bowl doesn't do any better than that, one out of every four. Welcome Frank Harden! Frank Harden: Thank you very much! A Ockershausen: Yeah. Now, the beauty that I have in my life is when I came to WMAL, Harden and Weaver were here, but they were Frank Harden and Jackson Weaver. They were just guys on the staff and you refreshed my memory by reading what you guys, and how you started. I'm fascinated by how you got into radio and how you got into radio at WMAL. Frank Harden: Well, I came here in 1947. A Ockershausen: Right after the war. Frank Harden: Right after the war and I had been in Denver working at a station out there. A Ockershausen: KSL, I remember the call airs from your book. Frank Harden: Oh, do you? A Ockershausen: Yes. Frank Harden: Okay! A Ockershausen: Big powerful radio station, KSL. Frank Harden: Yeah. You remember more than I do because one of the things that I've lost through all of my infirmities is my memory, I can't remember a lot of things. People say them to me and I say "Are you kidding?" A Ockershausen: Frank, that's not unusual. You got so much packed in there after all those years. Let's listen to a conversation you had with Tim Brant about earlier days in your military and broadcast career. Frank Harden and Tim Brant on WMAL in 1999 - D-Day Remembrance Frank Harden: 9:10 here on News Talk 6:30, WMAL on this 50th anniversary of D-Day. 1944 it took place, I can remember exactly want I was doing on D-Day, 1944. Tim Brant: Can you really? What were you doing? Frank Harden: I had been out of the Army for four days. Tim Brant: Is that right? Frank Harden: That's right, four days, medical discharge from a general hospital up in Pennsylvania, Deshon General Hospital in Pennsylvania. I more or less predicted D-Day because everybody was expecting "When's it going to happen? When's this going to happen?" A lot of us had been in the hospital for a long time with no active therapy of any kind, we were just there, just there in the hospital. Tim Brant: Just lying around. Frank Harden: Yeah, a bunch of guys from the North African Campaign, a bunch of guys from the Italian Campaign. We were all there. One day, they started calling off names. "Come down to the Colonel's office. Go down to the commanding officer's office." Went down there and one by one, we were standing in a line out in the hall, I'll remember that. As each guy would come out, he had been handed his discharge or told that he was being separated from the service. The only thing that we could speculate was that they were cleaning out the hospitals to get ready for D-Day. Tim Brant: Wow. Frank Harden: Sure enough, it happened four days later. Tim Brant: Well, people say too that there was a feeling. For instance in the various plants, they had to step up certain things, construction and that the trains were loaded.