CHICAGO - You can keep your iPod and your satellite radio. MP3s? Jack LaVelle has no use for them.
Enter the back room of LaVelle's Oak Forest, Ill., house - the room built 15 years ago for one purpose - and step back 100 years to when radio was born and poised to revolutionize home entertainment.
Radios by Edison, RCA, Emerson, and many other pioneering companies line every wall; immense but beautifully crafted ancestors to the gadgets that fill our homes today.
His collection includes antique and vintage pieces, most of which are working and restored to their original luster.
And that dedication to detail has made the LaVelles popular figures in the growing community of radio collectors across the Midwest.
"It's just like collecting old cars or records or anything else; people tend to gravitate to those things that were popular when they were growing up," said Ed Huether, 67, a radio collector who runs a repair shop out of his Forest Park home.
"Jack is as passionate as any of us. Every time he sees a radio, he's reaching for his wallet to add another one to his collection."
In an era when the iPod and home computing reign supreme, LaVelle's collection, one of the most extensive in the Chicago area, provides an interesting and important reminder of the origins of audio transmission.
While younger visitors might be stunned by the size and crude technology of these early machines, older generations are prodded to remember early-childhood nights at home, listening to the latest episodes of Captain Midnight or Terry and the Pirates.
"I've seen old men get tears in their eyes when they enter this room," said Janet LaVelle, Jack's wife. "You can see all these great memories rushing back to them."
Jack LaVelle, 72, knows the feeling.
As a boy growing up on Chicago's South Side, he followed popular radio shows such as Captain Midnight, about an Army pilot who led a secret squadron of fighters during World War II. The long-running show, which originated in Chicago, reached millions of listeners at its peak in the 1940s.
By the time LaVelle was a young man, he was tinkering with radios and early televisions and considering a career in electronics. He began installing rooftop antennas for television sets, and soon became an expert in how to restore and rebuild these cutting-edge devices.
While working in Chicago's Mount Greenwood neighborhood in the mid-1950s, LaVelle stumbled upon a broken 1928 Kolster radio.
He offered the owner $5 and took it home, where he cleaned the dark wood finish and repaired the brass tube sockets inside.
"It started working, just like that," LaVelle said. "The thing about these early radios is that they're all pretty simple when you get right down to it."
After completing his education at a vocational school, LaVelle opened his own repair shop out of his new home in Oak Forest.
His interest, bordering on obsession, with old radios blossomed. He joined numerous collectors clubs, including the Antique Radio Club of Illinois, where he met with others who shared his passion.
He and his wife scraped together what little money they had to buy radios from flea markets, yard sales, and estate sales.
Each purchase filled a gap in the history of the medium, beginning with early 1900 radios from Atwater-Kent and diamond-tipped Edison phonographs, and on to tabletop and pocket transistor radios from the 1950s.
His collection has grown so big - about 600 radios, LaVelle figures - that he has opened it to the public for free viewings. The Antique Radio Museum, as he calls it, has no Web page (the LaVelles can barely work their home computer) and is not advertised any place that could be easily found. But it attracts a few dozen children and seniors each year, most who stop and marvel at a piece of history come back to life.
"Some people walk in and they don't say a word," LaVelle said. "They just stop and stare, and you can tell it's taking them back in time."
For more information about the Antique Radio Museum, call 708-687-3007.
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