WUML Celebrates 70+ Years of Music and Memories

10/25/2024

TO Ed Brennen

In 1952, Percy Faith, Joe Stafford and Eddie Boyd topped the music charts, and an industrial engineering student named Edward Bonacci lived for 54 years in the former Eames Hall on North Campus, where the Pulicino Tong Business Center is now located.

Bonacci enjoyed playing records in his dorm room and built his own stereo amplifier to amplify the sound coming from his speakers. One day he was walking down the corridor and heard the record he was playing coming from the other room. Bonacci stuck his head in the door and realized that some of his classmates had picked up the signal from his amplifier on their AM radio.

“We like your music,” they told Bonacci.

Inspired by this stereophonic fluke, the students decided to create a true AM radio station out of what was then the Lowell Textile Institute. They found equipment, set up a studio in the basement of Kitson Hall (now Shah Hall) and began broadcasting as WLTI on January 15, 1953.

More than 70 years later, the station continues to live as VUML (91.5 FM).

On November 2, alumni of the University of Massachusetts Lowell student radio station will celebrate what Bonacci started with “A true underground radio reunion“at the Hilton Garden Inn in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the station and the newly created WUML Edward L. Bonacci Scholarship Fund.

“This will be a night where we see old friends and remember Ed’s work to make things right,” says reunion organizer Tony Janecek ’76-86, who spent four years at the station while earning a degree in electrical engineering. He then served as an unofficial adviser to the station for nearly two decades while earning a master’s degree in computer science.

Today, WUML has broadcast on FM and the Internet from the basement of Lydon Library on North Campus since 1971. Over the years, he has hosted live performances by artists such as the Pixies, Jethro Tull and Frank Zappa at his Fallout Shelter sound studio. The station broadcasts University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) hockey games, and Moloney Hall recently hosted the annual Rock for Tots benefit concert.

“It’s great to see the university maintaining and modernizing the station. It’s very nice,” says Janecek, who stopped by the studio Friday morning to reminisce with several members of the reunion planning committee.

Despite the popularity of streaming music services, satellite radio and podcasts, terrestrial radio remains strong, with 82% of Americans ages 12 and older listening to it every week, according to Nielsen Media Research.

This fall, WUML has 110 student announcers working as DJs, co-hosts and guests on 38 shows.

Carolina Tavares, a senior English major with a journalism major, joined WUML as a freshman and is now the general manager and genre director. She says continuing the station’s legacy is “such a gift.”

“I often feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself,” says the Milford, Massachusetts native. “Through WUML, I met some of my best friends and learned a lot—not just about radio, but about communication, leadership, and working with others.”

Tavares, who hosts “Flowers in the Rain” on Fridays from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., says it’s “amazing” that alumni created the scholarship.

“Many of us give so much time and energy to the station that it’s nice to see something like this scholarship happening,” she says.

Freddie McWilliams, a second-year chemical engineering student from Concord, Massachusetts, worked at the student radio station during high school. When he saw that UML had a station, he was “determined to get involved.”

“Streaming services and podcasts are taking over, but many people still listen to the radio in the car to and from work,” says McWilliams, who is hosting two shows this year: “Hub Premium,” Mondays from 6 to 8 p.m. 00 and “Hater Union” on Fridays from 7 to 9 am.

McWilliams is also the station’s chief engineer and works with operations manager Tom Tiger to “make sure everything runs smoothly and everyone can perform their shows.” He enjoys the camaraderie of the station, which operates as student club Tiger and Sarah Rhyne, director of student life and engagement, are advising.

“Even though it’s a big club with students from all different majors, everyone is very close to each other,” McWilliams says.

Ashley Kelly, a biology sophomore from Townsend, Massachusetts, is the station’s metal director.

“I met a lot of new people and learned about a lot of new genres of music,” says Kelly, who co-hosts the Friday morning show with McWilliams. “There’s a really good sense of community here.”

That would be music to Bonacci’s ears. In Lowell Tech’s 1954 yearbook, “The Pickout,” Bonacci said of the fledgling station, “We of WLTI believe that the friendship and camaraderie built through the station’s activities have been and will continue to be WLTI’s greatest asset.”

Tiger, who worked as an operations manager for two decades, says the popularity of podcasts has meant more students have wanted to take part in recent years to hone their broadcasting skills.

“Since COVID, there has been an increase in the number of people wanting to express their views and join the radio station,” he says. “We used to have one or two DJs in our main broadcast room, and suddenly I found there were dozens of chairs because everyone was crowded around the microphones.”

Students aren’t the only ones playing music and expressing their views on WUML. There are currently six shows hosted by nine UML alumni and seven shows hosted by 19 Lowell community members.

Rich Gingras ’79 and John Guregian joined the station as business students in the 1970s. In 1980, they started a show called “Blues Deluxe,” which Guregian still performs every Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m. He was honored by the Blues Foundation with the 2023 Keeping Blues Alive Award in Memphis, Tennessee.

“That was great. I started in college and the show went on forever. It never stops,” says Guregian, a Chelmsford, Mass., native who works as a senior contract analyst for Constellation Energy Solutions in Lowell.

Gingras remembers seeing an ad to join the station (then under the call sign WJUL) in the student newspaper, The Connector. He walked into the studio and the first person he met was Janecek.

“And I never left,” says Gingras, who eventually worked as the station’s music director and was part of the hockey broadcast team. After graduating, the Methuen, Massachusetts native hosted the show regularly until 1988. Today he is a senior program manager at information technology service provider Avaya.

“The friends you make in college really stay with you for the rest of your life,” says Gingras, who is on the reunion organizing committee along with Guregian, Janecek, Mike Kutlowski ’78, Joan Doody ’80 of the Year (who worked at Boston Radio for 25 years), Marie Anne O’Connor ’88, Chris Thompson ’89, Linda Cyr-Billings ’90 and Christina Ickes ’99.

Bonacci, who continued to work on the Hubble Space Telescope, proposed the idea of ​​creating a scholarship fund at the station’s first reunion in 1986 (dubbed the 33 1/3 Reunion). The scholarship never got off the ground, but Janecek helped revive the idea with Development Office following Bonacci’s death in 2020 aged 86.

“If we can ease the financial pressure on students, it will allow them to focus on their studies, which is the main goal,” Janecek says. “And it will also allow them to spend time at the station without having to worry about going to work.”

Like McWilliams, Janecek knew he wanted to work at a radio station in college. When the Meriden, Conn. native toured campuses, he looked for FM antennas. At UML he was delighted to see one on the roof of Southwick Hall.

Janeček did “a little bit of everything” at the station, but he was most interested in the technical side. He helped establish the station’s remote broadcast capabilities and, in 1994, helped move the FM transmitter to the top of Fox Hall.

Janecek, now a communications systems engineer at Abacus Technology Corporation, is looking forward to celebrating the radio station that alumni have built over the past seven decades while helping to ensure that students can continue to listen to music for decades to come.

“The media is changing, but I think students understand the need for an FM radio station,” he says. “They grew up with podcasts and music streaming, but radio is still very important. It’s part of a larger media landscape, and I think they appreciate that.”