Ham's Reward

On Jan. 22, 1937, some 1,500 residents of Shawneetown, Ill., sheltered behind their 60-foot flood wall, lost contact with Harrisburg, Ill., 23 miles away. The great Ohio Basin flood had cut them off from their nearest municipal neighbors and the world. As the flood waters rose, a Harrisburg ham (amateur short-wave operator), Robert Tompkins Anderson, volunteered to set up an observation post as near as he could get to Shawneetown and establish two-way radio communication with relief agencies that were trying to bring help.

By truck and boat (equipped with only one paddle), Amateur Anderson ferried his transmitter and receiver to a high spot six miles across the flood-swollen Wabash River from Shawneetown. When it became obvious that the Ohio would spill over Shawneetown's flood wall, Shawneetown's residents were evacuated to Indiana and Kentucky on orders received over Ham Anderson's radio. Evacuation was effected without loss of a single life. And after four raw, wet, sleepless days and nights, Ham Anderson went home to bed.

Nominated by the American Radio Relay League, this 32-year-old father of two last week was selected for the 1937 William Samuel Paley Amateur Radio Award, a sculptural abstraction of aluminum rods and spheres. The Paley Award was founded in"recognition of relief work done by radio amateurs in the 1936 flood disasters. Last year it went to Coudersport, Pa.'s Ham Walter Stiles Jr. He. in March 1936, moved a half ton of radio gear to flood-stricken Renovo, Pa., restored communication contact with the outside world to bring food, clothing and medicine to 4,000 people.

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