At 1 p.m. on July 31, 1936, WJNO-AM 1230 went on the air. Originally a CBS affiliate, WJNO played everything from classical music to Steve Allen. The station would survive the Depression, World War II and the advent of television and computers. WJNO-TV, Channel 5 (NBC), signed on Aug. 22, 1954; it became WPTV in 1956 and was bought by Scripps-Howard in December 1961. ...
Last week, we told you about Harold E. Watson of North Palm Beach, who died in 1994. Near the end of World War II, “Watson’s Whizzers” spirited several German jet planes out of Europe, advancing America’s understanding by years and keeping the items from the Japanese and the Soviet Union. “People would meet us at places and ask us questions,” said widow Ruth, who lives at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens. “He was a great talker and loved storytelling.” Watson worked for NATO in Europe in the 1950s, at one point overseeing atomic planning. In 1953, he became head of the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Watson retired as a major general in 1962. Among his honors: the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Two years earlier, he’d created a foundation that raised $350,000 to rebuild Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Virginia, where his disabled son was treated. The center’s student activities building was named for him in 1967. Watson moved in the late 1970s to North Palm Beach’s Old Port Cove. He got involved in several technologies, including solar heating. He also took a year off in 1978 to pilot his 44-foot yacht in the Caribbean. “He was very humble and didn’t want to talk much about his experience,” pal Gordon Gaster, a semi-retired Merrill Lynch executive, said last month. “Tom Brokaw called it the greatest generation,” Gaster said from his home in Jupiter. “This is a fellow that I think deserved to...
On July 19, 1971, the National Enquirer moved its 57 employees and their families from Englewood Cliffs, N.J., to Lantana to "be free of metropolitan New York's many problems." The Enquirer hosted a lavish Christmas display at its Lantana location until the 1988 death of owner Generoso Pope. The tabloid moved its offices to Boca Raton in 2000.
From the May 31, 1971, Palm Beach Post help wanted ads...
