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Edward Dumit: The Magnificent Voice of Public Radio Tulsa

Edward S. Dumit

Edward S. Dumit, the voice of Public Radio Tulsa, passed away on June 20, 2014 at the age of 84.

Brief Biography (as of Fall, 2008)

Edward Dumit, Associate Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of Tulsa, served TU for thirty-eight years as teacher of broadcasting courses and as manager, program director, and arts producer of public radio station KWGS. Following retirement in 1993, he continued until 2001 as producer and host of public radio broadcasts of concerts of the OK Mozart International Festival and Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Dumit presented preview lectures for every major Tulsa Opera production from 1970 to 1995 and hosted the preview feature preceding each Tulsa Philharmonic Masterworks concert from 1992 to 2001.

The Announcer's Handbook by Ben Graf Henneke & Edward Dumit

Among his awards are Oklahoma Governor’s Arts Award (1993), Harwelden-Kathleen P. Westby Lifetime Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts (1990), and Toastmasters Communication and Leadership Award (1998). He was TU’s Mr. Homecoming 1986 and has been inducted into Tulsa Central High School’s Alumni Hall of Fame. In 2004 he was named by the Tulsa Press Club as a Tulsa Radio Icon. In 2008 he was inducted into the University of Tulsa Communication Hall of Fame.

A native Tulsan, Dumit has been seen in numerous dramatic and comic acting and singing performances with Theatre Tulsa, the University of Tulsa Theatre, the Gilbert & Sullivan Society, and Experimental Circle and has been narrator with the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra and Tulsa Oratorio Chorus. Through many years of arts broadcasting, beginning in 1950, he has interviewed around a thousand musicians, composers, artists, actors, dancers, writers and directors, such as Van Cliburn, Beverly Sills, Aaron Copland, ItzhakPerlman, PinchasZukerman, Leontyne Price, Samuel Ramey, Arthur Fiedler, James Galway, Peter Nero, Doc Severinsen, Agnes de Mille, Alexander Hogue, Ransom Wilson, and Dame Eva Turner, to name a few.

Cover of Say It Right

Dumit co-authored with Dr. Ben Henneke The Announcer’s Handbook, a standard broadcast text published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1959-1984), and was pronouncer of classical music names and titles for the LP recording, Say It Right! (1959). In 1979, the Ave Maria Press of Notre Dame published his audio cassette recording of An Angel in My House by Tobias Palmer (one of the pseudonyms of Winston Weathers).

For over two decades until 2000, he coached each Miss Oklahoma each summer, including Miss America 1996 Shawntel Smith, in voice and diction and interview technique.

Back cover of Say It Right

For thirty-nine consecutive years (1958-1996), Dumit served as University of Tulsa Commencement announcer, during which time he prepared pronunciations of approximately 30,000 graduates’ names.

Through the years, he has continued recording radio and television commercials, narration and voice-overs and is the telephone voice of the Philbrook Museum of Art and the station identification voice for Tulsa public radio KWTU-FM88.7 and KWGS-FM89.5. Since 1996, he has volunteered three mornings a week to reading from the Tulsa World for the state of Oklahoma’s Older Blind Program. Preceding that he recorded novels and textbooks for the Recording Volunteers of Tulsa from the 1950s until 1996.

Dumit is a board member of Chamber Music Tulsa and has served on the boards of Theater Tulsa and Tulsa Alliance for Classical Theater. He is an Elder at First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa and an active member of the church’s History and Archives committee; also, member of the Music in the Schools committee of the Hyechka Music Club.

Courses Dumit taught at TU

Introduction to Radio, Radio Production, Introduction to Television, Television Production, Broadcast Announcing, Ad lib Announcing, Oral Communication, Writing for Broadcasting, News Writing, Station Management and Programing, Film Form and Analysis. Also, occasionally for the School of Music — Opera History, and (for one year) History of Music.

TU Assignments from Fall, 1955 through Summer, 1993

  • (Speech Dept. until Speech and Journalism departments were reorganized in 1971 into Communication and Theater departments) 
  • 1955-1972 — Half-time teaching in Speech Dept. and half-time KWGS manager
  • 1972-1984 — Full-time teaching in reorganized Communication Dept. (brief stint as Career Planning and Placement counselor)
  • 1984-1993 — Full-time at KWGS as Program Director and then Arts Producer

The Early Days

Edward:  Born in Tulsa August 14, 1929 at St. John’s Hospital (as it was called then).

Mother: AnisaDumit, born 1894, came to U.S. in 1907 from Tripoli (Troblos), Syria (the part of Syria that is now Lebanon) to join brother Elias, who had come in 1898. They had both been reared in the Presbyterian mission school in Tripoli. After selling fancy linens door-to-door from suitcases from New York to Butte, Montana, they settled in Tulsa in 1912 and set up business as E. and A. Dumit (later, Dumits’ Rugs and Linens), continuing 44 years until 1956. Their brother Habib also settled in Tulsa, opening Dumit’s Rug Cleaning and Upholstering.

Father: Salim Jacob Dumit, born Feb. 16, 1877 in Latakia, Syria (still Syria); soon moved to nearby Antioch, where his father and he later taught in the Presbyterian mission school. Salim and his two brothers had a jewelry store in Los Angeles and then worked in a lamp factory in Kansas City until Salim moved to Tulsa in January of 1924 to join Elias and Anisa as a third partner. In July, Salim and Anisa were married at the First Presbyterian Church, which Anisa had joined the first week after moving to Tulsa.

I was born at Tulsa’s St. John’s Hospital August 14, 1929 and seemed to grow up downtown, where I helped wait on customers and type business letters throughout junior high and high school, as did my cousins Vickie and Evelyn. I don’t believe that Uncle Habib’s children — Richard and Dorothy — spent much time at their father’s place of business.

Eventually it seemed to me that the natural sequence of events was leading toward my eventually running the business. Mother enrolled me in “elocution lessons” when I was 5, and that same year (1935), I made my radio debut on Jenkins Music Company’s Saturday morning “Kiddies Review” over KVOO, reciting the poem, “I had a little pig” (“with a nose that could dig all around in the dirt.  It didn’t look hard; so I tried it in the yard.  I did it all right . . . but it hurt!”) Who could forget that?

Dumit_tribute_1.MP3
Edward Dumit recalls his early years (tribute produced by Steve Clem, from a Voices of Oklahoma interview)

I was heard on the “Kiddies Review” irregularly through the early years of grade school. Then during the 5th and 6th grades, I joined the speech class of Alan Hubbard, a KVOO announcer who also produced a weekly Saturday morning quarter-hour program called “The Junior Playhouse,” using the students in his advanced group as actors in fairy tales and light comedies. Being the youngest, I usually played a child or the wicked witch (my voice hadn’t changed yet). I was literally growing up in a 50,000-watt radio station studio.

At Horace Mann Junior High, I became involved in Student Council, Boys Glee Club, Ninth grade play and editing the school paper, the Cardinal Chronicle; but at Central High School, beside being in all three class plays (directed by Alphild Larson) plus a couple of Speech Arts plays (directed by Isabelle Ronan), it was back in the radio studio with frequent Saturday morning appearances on “The Experimental Theater of the Air” on KOME, produced by that significant influence on my career, Isabelle Ronan . . . the other two principal influences being Ben Henneke and Beau Bruestle later at TU.

Dumit_Tribute_2.mp3
Edward Dumit's early years as an actor and college student (tribute produced by Steve Clem, from a Voices of Oklahoma interview)

After one year at OU as a business major (1947-’48), I realized that my life was moving more obviously in the direction of a career in broadcasting. My father simply said, “You should do what you want to do,” and that was that. Changing majors, I continued at OU another semester until I visited the new state-of-the-art radio facilities at TU during the Christmas holidays and was impressed by the charisma and enthusiasm of the head of the Speech Department, Ben GrafHenneke. Two weeks later, in January of 1949, I transferred to TU, not even suspecting that I was to spend most of the rest of my life in tight association with the University of Tulsa and its noncommercial voice, KWGS.  Had I enrolled at TU immediately after high school, I’d have been involved with KWGS from its dedication in the fall of 1947.

At TU, I immediately auditioned and was placed on the announcing staff of the then student-operated facility. With my interest in classical music, I was thrilled to become both Music Director (non-paying) and Music Director (paid student rate), not only in charge of “pulling” and replacing each day’s 78 rpm recordings and the first few long-playing records (LPs) but also planning both the classical and popular music programs for the AOD (announcer-on-duty) to introduce. This led to my first experiences my senior year at interviewing celebrities — four of the Tulsa Philharmonic’s A-list of world-famous musicians — Metropolitan Opera matinee-idol tenor, James Melton on Nov. 1, 1950, followed by pianist Rudolf Firkusny, violinist Erica Morini, and duo-pianists Ferrante & Teicher. I’d already had my first professional experience the summer of 1949 as a board announcer at commercial station KWON in Bartlesville.

During college I also was fortunate to be cast in several personality-stretching roles in TU Theater . . . from an old man and a servant in the Henneke-directed “Taming of the Shrew” to a Whirling Dervish in George Kernodle’s staging of Moliere’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.” But the biggest challenge was a series of roles entrusted to me by Beaumont Bruestle, who, with Philadelphia nightclub entertainer Charles Sweier, wrote twenty-or-so musical comedies for students to “world premiere” annually throughout his tenure at TU.

He had the courage to cast me as a comic Julius Caesar in “What Will History Say?” adapted from Shaw’s “Caesar and Cleopatra”; The Chinese Chorus in “The Wonderful Tang” (also telecast on KOTV in 1950 as the first live tv drama in Tulsa); Luigi Harrison, temperamental manager of the New York Opera, in “I’d Love to Be You”; and Texas millionaire Buck Jones in “Money Makes the Man,” adapted from “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.” Caesar’s “Tiber Rag” had to be encored in every performance.  Later, as a TU faculty member, I was Herr Schultz in “Cabaret” and the Judge in “The Caine Mutiny Courtmarshal,” among other roles.

Also of great value was the opportunity of acting in radio drama, still popular in the late 1940s and ‘50s. John Keown, the Speech Department’s broadcasting teacher at the time (soon to move on to direct at NBC, Chicago, produced the weekly “KWGS Players.” By no stretch of the imagination could I ever have been cast as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Othello or Macbeth on the stage; but thanks to Johnny, I got away with murder on the radio in all three roles.

Dumit_Christmas_Prairie.mp3
Edward Dumit hosting "Christmas on the Prairie" on TU's Kendall Hall stage - December 2, 1984

Two or three weeks after TU’s 1951 Commencement, I began 17 months as a staff announcer on KMUS in Muskogee until returning to Tulsa in December of 1952 to be a staff announcer on KFMJ.

My commercial announcing experience ended abruptly when I returned from my first week of vacation in August of 1955 to receive a phone call from Beau Bruestle, head of the Speech Dept. by then, since Henneke was now assistant to President C. I. Pontius. Ben had recommended me to get the university out of a pickle. The director of broad-casting had just given TU notice that he was leaving to become head of the Speech Dept. at Ripon College in Wisconsin — two weeks before September classes would begin! KFMJ graciously allowed me to skip going back to work so that I could begin work immediately at TU with the rank of Instructor, assigned half-time to managing student-operated KWGS and half-time to teaching broadcasting courses. The two halves added up to more than a whole.

While announcing at KFMJ, I had been taking morning classes at TU toward a Master’s degree in Speech. When I began full-time work at TU, all that remained to be completed was my thesis — “Staging Bartok’s opera, ‘Bluebeard’s Castle,’ for Color Television.” Although my degree, received Spring, ‘57, was through the Speech Dept., my thesis topic justified my taking several music courses with Dr. BelaRozsa and music history with Dr. William McKee. Although I had taken piano lessons during junior high and high school, these college courses and my own private research provided me with “street cred” in my years of radio and live music commentary that have followed.

To bolster my ability to teach television as well as radio, I spent the summer of 1957 as an intern at NBC in Chicago at their studios in the Merchandise Mart. At the same time, Dr. Henneke was aware of the need for a revision of his pioneering textbook, The Radio Announcer’s Handbook, because of the rapid increase in number of television stations. When it was published in 1948, Time Magazine featured it as the first textbook for announcers and credited Henneke with establishing standards of professionalism in this field. Because of his increased administrative duties, Ben chose to turn over to me the project of revising the radio material and, in conjunction with him, writing the television entries and updating drill material. Longer in content but with a shorter title, The Announcer’s Handbook was published in 1959 by Rinehart & Co. (later known as Holt, Rinehart & Winston). In print for 25 years, “Henneke and Dumit” was in wide circulation — used by places even as far away as the emerging broadcasting services of Botswana in Africa and Kuching, Sarawak in Malaysia. You can imagine how awesome it was for this young professor to be given the gift of equal billing!

But that same year of 1959, my second “publication” was released by Grayhill, Inc. (owned by the KWGS Chief Engineer, Claude Hill) — a single red vinyl long-playing record with booklet called “Say It Right!” — a guide to the pronunciation of almost 300 opera, ballet and tone poem titles, musical terms and names of composers and musicians. Pianist Jerome Rappaport of the TU School of Music provided less-than-half-minute keyboard illustrations of tempos, rhythms and moods. Our purpose was for it to be a guide for announcers and students, but Time Magazine built a humorous review around its being indispensable in the game of one-upmanship during cocktail party conversation. The respected critic of the Saturday Review of Literature, Irving Kolodin, called it “A well-made record.” Time sold more albums.  Note:  Last year “Say It Right!” showed up on the web site of a New York FM station 49 years after publication, and it was a shock to hear my half-century-younger voice slowly reciting and then repeating faster the endless lists of names and words in many languages — useless without the original accompanying printed lists and instructions as aids.

Much more could be added about 39 years of Commencement announcing and 18 years of producing the one-semester-a-year weekly half-hour TU “Galaxy” telecasts on KTUL-TV that served as the invaluable lab for my TV Production class each spring. Then one could say so much about surviving 17 years of managing a year-around student-operated radio station — before the arrival of NPR and the requirement of its having a minimum of 5 professionals for more polished sound and necessary fund-raising capabilities. Also: the unfinished pursuit of a Ph.D. at Northwestern U. and O.U. — all but a completed dissertation (‘58-’69) — and active “retirement” years.

Blessed friends and relatives... Perhaps some other time

Schools

  • K-1 — Conway-Broun (private school)
  • 2-6 — Riverview (public grade school)
  • 7-9 — Horace Mann (junior high) 
  • 10-12 — Central (high)
  • University of Oklahoma (Fall, 1947-Fall, 1948 — freshman, first semester sophomore)
  • University of Tulsa (Winter, 1948-Spring, 1951 — second semester sophomore through senior)
  • B.A. in Speech (Radio-TV) — 1951
  • M.A. in Speech (Radio-TV) — 1957 
  • (Course work part-time 1953-’55 while announcing at KFMJ, Tulsa) 
  • Thesis part-time 1956-’57 while Instructor at TU:  “Staging Bartok’s Opera, ‘Bluebeard’s Castle,’ for Color Television”)
  • Additional graduate work at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and University of Oklahoma (Norman, OK) 

Some dramatic, comic and musical roles

Theater Tulsa — 

  • Maurice Ritz (Capote’s “The Grass Harp”)
  • Pistol (Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor”)
  • Father Drobney (“Don’t Drink the Water”)
  • Señor Sanchez (“Cactus Flower”)
  • Major General Stanley (G. & S.’s “Pirates of Penzance”)
  • Wazir (“Kismet”)

Gilbert & Sullivan Society—

  • Duke of Plaza-Toro (“The Gondoliers”)
  • (Admiral) Sir Joseph Porter (“H.M.S. Pinafore”)

Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra —

  • Devil in Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale,”
  • Narrator for Virgil Thomson’s “The Plow That Broke the Plains,” 
  • “The Trumpet of the Swan,” Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” Honegger’s “King David”

Tulsa Oratorio Chorus and Tulsa Sym. Orch. —

  • Honegger’s “King David”

Resources

Contemporary Edward Dumit photos by Michael Bruchas

John Erling's Voices of Oklahoma Edward Dumit interview

Edward Dumit's Say It Right pronunciation LP from 1959

Edward Dumit's online memorial

The Announcer's Handbook by Ben Graf Henneke and Edward Dumit