Eunice Randall-- Boston's first female announcer/engineer by
Donna Halper  If you had been around greater Boston during the
19-teens and early 20s, you might have heard Eunice Randall
referred to as "ER," since radio announcers were not usually
allowed to use their names on the air. To her ham radio friends,
she was "the OW of 1XE," or "1CDP;" to some of her youngest
fans, she was "the Story Lady." Eunice Randall was all of this
and more-although she was born in an era when women's options
were still extremely limited, she grew up to achieve a number of
'firsts' in the exciting new industry called radio broadcasting.
In the early 1900s, Mattapoisett (a town in southeastern
Massachusetts) was still rural, and Eunice's father was a
farmer, while one of her brothers ran a mill. As far as I have
been able to ascertain, there were no 'radio bugs' in her
family, and yet somehow she became fascinated by the rapidly-
expanding world of ham radio. Her first station, which she built
herself, was called "ER", and her tec