The Mail Rolls In: KFAC to Missouri

The columns that draw the most mail never fail to surprise me.

It is one of the arrogances of columnists that we tend to believe that the things that agitate us the most are mirrored by those who read the column. And, of course, that often isn’t true.

It has been some months since I dealt with letters here, and during that span the three columns that drew the most mail were: the demise of KFAC, my homecoming visit to the University of Missouri and the narrative of a World War II experience that led me to an advertisement in the Nov. 22, 1941, New Yorker magazine.

What the KFAC mail told me is that someone is missing a bet by not starting a classical music station--or converting an existing one--in Orange County. The audience is large and remarkably faithful. As Elizabeth Thacker of Mission Viejo wrote: “KFAC’s classical music programs enriched and saved my life. Over and over again.”

Ethel Mae Lambrinch of Huntington Beach noted, “Isn’t it ironic that the ever-improving quality available in tapes and discs is mostly used for mind-shattering, all-sound-alike rock ‘n’ roll?”

And Rachel May of Santa Ana wrote: “What can we do to get a good classical music station back on the air? I am willing to pay a modest amount of money, as I’m sure many classical music lovers might also. I would guess the demographics of classical music lovers would show them to be a smallish but potentially lucrative segment of the population for advertisers.”

Are any Orange County entrepreneurs out there listening?

The Missouri mail confirmed something I had only suspected: that all of Orange County didn’t go to USC. Or claim to.

A quite remarkable number of Missouri alums surfaced to share their own nostalgia trips with me. Typical was Charles Murry of Huntington Beach, who wrote that the ancient brick buildings of the Missouri campus “provide a tonic for the soul which the completely functional structures put up since World War II on all campuses cannot even approach.”

The column about the New Yorker advertisement that ran two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor and appeared to signal that attack to someone received the biggest response.

A large ad and smaller ads inside the issue referred to a game board named “The Deadly Double” that was seemingly manufactured by a company that the intelligence community later found didn’t exist. Eerily, two dice showed the numbers 12 and 7, neither of which is found on standard dice.

National Public Radio interviewed me and used a rather sizable segment of the interview on the air (in which--by adroit editing--they managed to expunge every mention of The Times).

Some of the mail was fascinating.

Retired Marine Corps Capt. Louis Bushnell of Santa Ana, for example, enclosed a copy of an ad that appeared a few days before the attack in the Honolulu Advertiser. (Bushnell was born and raised in that city.)

It takes a considerable stretch of the imagination to read subversive messages into this ad of a silk importing company, but Naval Intelligence apparently gave it a great deal of attention before dismissing it.

Bill Preston, a former advertising man who now lives in Huntington Beach, completed an intriguingly detailed analysis of questions raised by the New Yorker ad. For example, how were the seven teaser ads placed so precisely, how did the advertiser get island treatment for his one-column ad, why didn’t Naval Intelligence follow up on the source of the artwork or typography, both of which carry distinctive stamps? That sort of thing.

Preston sent the ad and his letter to nine “much-above-average thinkers” (including a mystery writer) and asked them to comment on the puzzle. He has promised to deliver the results to me.

The most frustrating mail to report on are the long, thoughtful letters that are difficult to excerpt.

I’ve had two such letters from Ray Bracy of Tustin, the most recent on the names of special-interest groups. He concluded: “The voters of Irvine . . . have told the world that they believe it is quite all right to have a group of second-class citizens. Now, if we can just get those subversives out of the schools. . . . You were accurate in calling it McCarthyism brought up to date. So where is our Joe Welsh?”

And Sheldon Karlan of Buena Park wrote how in his view the growth of individual freedom “has become equated with (moral) decadence,” supporting his thesis with half a dozen specific examples.

Both letters merit longer treatment than I can give here and will be held as the possible subjects of future columns.

And then, of course, there are the zingers.

Bill Hartman of Cypress wrote: “You must be the slob that sits around the TV laughing at such off-color shows as ‘Married With Children.’ You know, just a ‘wide variety of people doing a wide variety of things.’ I’ll still take a little Republican intolerance any day compared to the barnyard society you seem to espouse.”

And a correspondent who identifies himself only as “Jim” wrote: “Please stop trying to protect my civil rights! Myself and many respectable friends have functioned well because we know how to act in society. I don’t need your crusading to tell me what I can and cannot do. You have absolutely no idea what the life style of the average gay is outside of Orange County. . . . I feel patronized in a way that a black person would when the white liberal admits he knows how it is to be black.”

Jim thoughtfully told me I could respond in my column, but I’m not sure what I’m being accused of here. Offhand, I don’t know any white liberals who make such claims. We just have this funny feeling that everyone ought to have the same rights, including Jim.

Finally, there are the phone calls. I received one the other day from Irmalee Desenberg of Corona del Mar, who wants the world to know that good Samaritans aren’t an extinct breed, after all.

Irmalee and her husband, Bud, were headed for a reunion at Stanford University over the holidays when Irmalee went to sleep at the wheel and their car miraculously crossed four lanes of opposing traffic on Interstate 5 near Bakersfield and turned over.

Even more miraculously, neither of the Desenbergs was badly hurt, but the experience was made much less shattering by a young man who stopped immediately after the accident and stayed with them throughout the ordeal.

He loaded all their possessions in his car, followed the ambulance to the hospital, stayed until they were pronounced OK and released, and then drove them to Stanford, although he was going only to San Jose.

His name is Frank Drolep, he works in the Ontario Fire Department, and he’s unmarried.

“I plan to find him a good wife,” Irmalee said. “It’s the least I can do.”