By Rebecca Toov

You are listening to U of M Radio on your Historic Dial!

President John F. Kennedy meets with newly-appointed United States Minister to Bulgaria, Eugenie M. Anderson in May 1962. Image ID: AR7272-A, image is in Public Domain. Original is available at https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHP-AR7272-A.aspx.

Season 3: Episode 1. Women on the Air: Eugenie Anderson

You are listening to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial podcast. Welcome to Season 3: Episode 1.

Hello again, this is Rebecca Toov, Collections Archivist at the University of Minnesota Archives.  This season, the podcast will follow the theme of the long-standing Libraries program, First Fridays.  Every First Friday of the month from October to May at 12:00 p.m. staff from Archives and Special Collections present archival materials from the collections at Elmer L. Andersen Library.

The program theme for this year is: We Are Here: Women in the Archives. The description states, “With women comprising half the population, their accomplishments and voices are found throughout the archives. Yet do their stories regularly rise to the top? The 2018-2019 First Fridays season will focus on female-identifying stories – the firsts, the unsung, the leaders, the marginalized, those who found their way to a place at the table and those who may never have managed to get there.”  

For the 3rd season of U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial Podcast, we will present to you “Women on the Air,” a supplement to the First Fridays program.   Episodes will feature radio dramatizations and interviews with and about women in University and Minnesota history. We will also share broadcasts on such topics as equal rights and continuing education for women.  The voices of the female performers, producers, and program directors at University radio station KUOM will also be heard.

Our first episode features a woman who achieved many notable firsts, a political leader who used her voice to better her community, implement and sustain diplomacy, and develop her own potentiality: Eugenie Anderson, the first woman to be named a United States Ambassador.  

A profile of Eugenie’s personal and professional life was featured on KUOM on “Minnesota Honor Roll,” a program of The Minnesota School of the Air - a series of educational radio programs designed for school-age children to listen to in the classroom. Eugenie’s profile originally aired on February 24, 1978.  Let’s listen...

Broadcast Transcript

[Band music]

Introduction: Sinclair Lewis, author, Charles Lindbergh, aviator, The Mayo Brothers, physicians, Lew Ayres, actor, Eugenie Anderson, United States ambassador... [voice fades, music plays up]

Announcer: Minnesota Honor Roll: stories from the lives of Minnesota’s outstanding men and women. Here is our story for today about United States ambassador, Mrs. Eugenie Anderson.

[Orchestral music]

KUOM's Minnesota School of the Air "Minnesota Honor Roll" transcript page for radio program on Eugenie Anderson.

Narrator: Among the very high officials of the United States government, there are some who do their work not in Washington D.C., but in the capital cities of other nations. These officials are called ambassadors. Ambassadors have the job of representing the United States in the country to which they are assigned. The ambassadors go to live in the other country, and, in short,