WWSC countdown to 75 — Fred Carota
This is the latest in an occasional series of posts leading up to the 75th anniversary of Glens Falls radio station WWSC on Dec. 18, 2021.
Fred Carota preferred Hometown U.S.A., as Glens Falls became known in World War II, to Hawaii.
“Navy life in Hula-town is swell, but I prefer Hudson Falls or Glens Falls,” Carota, a U.S. Navy radio operator on the U.S. Indianapolis, based at Pearl Harbor, wrote to his family in May 1941.
Carota had been reassigned as an aerial photographer and gunnery instructor by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
He spent the day on emergency assignment with a Red Cross ambulance crew.
At one point, a piece of shrapnel flattened a tire on the vehicle.
“The shrapnel might have been in the road. I don’t think it was fired at me,” Carota wrote his family. “Someday I may be able to tell you about the bombardment. — It was unforgettable.”
Prior to enlisting in the Navy, Carota, who grew up in Hudson Falls and lived most of his adult life in Glens Falls, was a reporter for The Post-Star for about a decade.
He started as a part-time sports writer during high school and worked his way up to a full-time news beat.
In 1936, Carota began writing “On The Airwaves” a regular Post-Star column about the radio broadcasting industry.
After World War II, he was a radio newscaster at WWSC in Glens Falls.
Carota had some experience in public announcing even before he graduated radio school in the Navy.
He was The Post-Star and Glens Falls Times backup announcer on boxing nights.
On the evenings of a major national fight, crowds would gather outside the newspaper offices at the corner of Glen and Park streets, and an editor or reporter would announce round-by-round results via megaphone as they came across the wire.
Usually editor Ed Sherman did the announcing, but Carota filled in at least twice, including on June 14, 1934.
“A crowd of fight enthusiasts, 1,000 strong, left their homes and radios last night to hear the round-by-round description of the Carnera-Barr classic broadcast from the editorial offices of The Post-Star,” The Post-Star reported on June 15. “The throng lined both sides of Glen Street from Berry to Bank Square, with a good many leaning from windows of buildings along the way.”
In 1952, Carota was recalled to active U.S. Navy duty during the Korean War.
He was chief petty officer in charge of the press and newsreel section of the public information office for the 1st Naval District headquarters at Boston.
After the Korean War he worked in government, as Glens Falls City Clerk for several years and for 18 years as an aid in the state Legislature and governor’s office in Albany.
Carota, a Republican, ran several times for elected office.
“Politically Mr. Carota has twice been a Republican candidate for supervisor of the First Ward, Glens Falls, a strong Democrat center, and in November 1953 led the entire Republican ticket but lost to his opponent by the slim margin of 74 votes, in one of the finest showings ever made by a GOP nominee in the First Ward.”
In 1954, Carota briefly was a candidate for the Republican nomination for state Senate.
Sources: The Post-Star Dec. 29, 1928; June 15, 1934; Nov. 23, 1940; March 3, 29, May 16, Dec. 18, 1941; Sept. 16, 23, 1943; April 3, 1949; Oct. 10, 1950; May 9, 1952; Sept. 15, 1953; July 17, 20, 1954; June 16, 1983
Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.
