Ralph Epperson, founder of WPAQ, the county’s first radio broadcast station, was dedicated to promoting local artists and preserving the old-time music he loved. Several hundred records of local, regional, and national artists, as well as public service and other messages, were recorded at WPAQ in Epperson’s lifetime. The recording machines, manufactured by Presto Recording Corp. are part of the WPAQ exhibit in our Hometown Heroes gallery. The unique collection represents, in some cases, the only known recording of certain songs or artists from Virginia and North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. That collection is preserved today as part of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Southern Folklife Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Library.
Sometime in the late 1950s or early 1950s a crime was committed in Mount Airy. Specifically, a crime involving the First Baptist Church on North Main Street.
I first learned of this…
