Television: Rock ‘n’ Learn

Bob Waldron, 35, of Seattle’s radio station KOL, is a sad-faced disk jockey who hates rock “n” roll (“Sounds like a drunk with the heaves”) and dislikes his work (“It’s not very much fun, you know”). But to Seattle’s schoolchildren, brainy Bob has been a sort of hero—ever since the night he inadvertently stumbled into the field of education. “A couple of weeks ago,” he explains, “I was sitting here bored as hell, wondering what to do next and rattling on, and I make this innocent statement—something like: ‘Hey, kids, I’ll do your homework for you if you need help. Got lots of time.’ ” The invitation was no sooner out than the station’s dormant night switchboard lit up like an electric train.

Geometry They Don’t Dig. A onetime premedical student at Michigan State University. Waldron found himself confronted by every kind of question, from “What is an idea?” to “What are the three body types?” He had to conjugate Latin verbs, locate the source of the Mississippi, identify the President of the U.N. General Assembly, solve all sorts of math problems for troubled bobby-soxers. “Geometry,” he found, “they just don’t dig.” So many questions poured in that Waldron soon realized the station’s “reference library—a 1943 Who’s Who, a 1950 Information Please Almanac and a big, beat-up Webster’s Dictionary” would never see him through.

From his own library he resurrected his college texts, Handbook of Engineering Fundamentals and Mathematical Tables from Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, KOL came across with an Encyclopaedia Britannica and a world atlas. Occasionally an adult volunteer would drop in to help with the answers. By last week Bob was getting more than 200 phone calls a night, and KOL was planning to hire an assistant and provide extra telephone lines.

“Why, Honey …” Waldron still spins such platters as Bebop Baby and Black Slacks, still chatters on about his sponsor’s solid products, still gives the latest news bulletins every half-hour. But in between, he must find out whom Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice married, define “scyphus,” reel off the precautions that should be taken when making an atomic reactor or ponder such posers as how fast a snowball of a given diameter must go to melt on impact with a wall of a given temperature. Though he sometimes postpones the more difficult questions, he usually finds something to say. “Why, honey,” he told a girl who wanted to know about Tom Paine’s Common Sense, “that was a pamphlet in favor of the American Revolution. It was one of those things that started the old ball rolling to where we are right now.”

So far, Seattle’s teachers and school officials have taken brainy Bob’s service philosophically. “Elvis and learning,” says one official, “seem an impossible combination, but I’m for it if it can be done.” Adds Bob about his homework kick: “I don’t know quite where it’s taking me, but it’s nice to hear the kids so mannerly. I must say I’m far, far more impressed by the questions they ask than the records they request.”