Fri, Oct. 01, 2004
Associated Press

Fortuna, Calif. - Jean Ruth Hay, who woke millions of American troops each
morning during World War II with her upbeat radio program "Reveille With
Beverly," which was broadcast into foxholes, cockpits and military outposts
from Alaska to New Zealand, has died. She was 87.

Hay, a resident of Fortuna, a small community on the Eel River in Northern
California, died Sept. 18 after suffering a stroke while gardening, her son
Bob said.

"She was a really strong, fascinating woman," Bob, 50, said. "To do
everything she did in a lifetime is amazing ... and she did it all at a time
when women weren't usually in the spotlight."

Between 1941 and 1944, Hay's dawn broadcast as the effervescent Beverly
reached an estimated 11 million people. Her jumpin', jivin' selections -
Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole - were a welcome
alternative to the 5:30 a.m. bugler's blast that jarred American troops from
their beds in military outposts across the globe.

With a cold Coca-Cola in one hand and a stack of records in the other, Hay's
day at Hollywood's station KNX-AM began with her signature opening, "Hi
there, boys of the USA."

"We're ready with the stuff that makes you swing and sway," she would croon.

Called the world's first global disc jockey, her programs reached servicemen
in 54 countries. Some saw her as the American counterbalance to the Pacific
theater's "Tokyo Rose," who was actually an amalgam of several young women
in Japan airing anti-American propaganda.

Hay posed for pinup shots and was voted by troops, "The girl we'd most like
to be trapped in the turret of a B-17 with."

Born in Philadelphia, Hay got her start in radio in 1941. The University of
Colorado graduate had heard soldiers at Fort Logan complain of starting
their days to the blast of a bugle.

As she told the story, she went to the manager of Denver radio station KFEL
and pitched her idea to "let the guys police their barracks to the beat of
the band of the king of swing" - with her as disc jockey. She called herself
Beverly because it "sort of rhymed" with reveille.

Her morning show debuted on Oct. 20, 1941 and was an immediate success.

After being featured in Time and Life magazines in 1942, she was offered a
job in Hollywood at a CBS affiliate. Armed Forces Radio Service broadcast
her show overseas after America entered the war, along with a shorter
program she hosted called "GI Jive."

Years later, Hay learned that her broadcasts were occasionally used to
transmit coded secret information, she said on her Web site. She said she
was ordered at times "from on high" to read introductions word-for-word and
announce obscure songs such as "Opening Night," "Torpedo Junction" and "I
Dug a Ditch."

She married bandleader Freddie Slack in 1945, then divorced three years
later. She later married John Hay. She worked after the war with the Santa
Barbara-based Direct Relief International, a charity for which she served as
chairman and board member.

Hay is survived by her husband of 52 years, three children and a grandson.

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