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By Lou Powsner
Brooklyn Daily
A third generation of Gamblings — all named “John” — is broadcasting daily over our WOR Radio New York, he is.
The name Gambling has been a virtual perennial on this major radio station — one of just a few that retains its original three call letters, as opposed to the four most radio stations use.
Mine ears first heard the voice of a John Gambling in 1920s, when we were introduced to the magic of radio broadcasting that began during my youthful school days. Radio WOR or WJZ filled my youth with news, music, and daily forecasts, often injected with humor, it did.
We personally recall each of the three generations Gamblings, but the only one that we recall going to war was the first John Gambling, who drew a desk job in Washington, while bullets — and the atom bombs — exploded in the trenches “over there.”
The Gambling generations now do their daily radio program from Manhattan, a far throw from Midtown, or the world’s battlefields.
We must include that they were “downtown” when maniacs blasted the ill-fated World Trade Towers and again when marchers exploited the streets near Holy Trinity Church on Broadway opposite the newest WOR radio station. WOR officials quite proudly hail their newest locale down where major actions have taken place, often unfortunately!
Of the three major radio station locations, WOR had dually grown greatly out of its original locale in Bamberger’s Department Store in Newark, New Jersey. It followed to New York City on Broadway & 40th Street, and are now in the hub of Manhattan’s Downtown growth in an office tower amidst the traditions of the empirical Wall Street Stock Markets, the federal and international towers and world markets.
As WOR thrives, Newark is just a wake of neglect, or in its own world of horror and disarray!
Through it all, the Gambling traditions ride the crest of helping our public to uphold the traditions and the histories of the past and the cloning of our futures! Forever we will be “Rambling with Gambling!”
This is Lou Powsner.
World War II veteran and famed Neptune Avenue haberdasher Lou Powsner has been Speaking Out for Brooklynites since the 1950s. Read his column monthly on BrooklynDaily.com.