Albert Grobe
As the "Voice of the New York Times" and a fixture in NY radio for over
30 years, Albert A. Grobe retired in 1973. He was Chief Announcer and
Production Manager of The New York Times-owned WQXR-AM and WQXR-FM. Al
Grobe (pronounced GROW bee), a native of Youngstown, Ohio, sold shoes
by day after his high-school graduation in 1929 and attended Youngstown
College at night. He also joined a theater group doing radio plays.
Moving to Buffalo in 1932, he became a member of the Jane Keeler Little
Theater, which presented radio plays on two stations. The stations
offered him an announcer's job. This led to jobs in New York for WINS
as sports announcer, chief announcer and, in 1934, news announcer. In
the following years, Grobe worked for the New York State Network and
for Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia's political campaigns. He joined WQXR
in 1940. During World War II, Mr. Grobe narrated Navy training films
and doubled as a night announcer for the Office of War Information
(OWI). The OWI in NY was the location where Robert Redford worked in
naval uniform in The Way We Were, with Barbara Streisand. A story Grobe
enjoyed telling was of being the introducing announcer for President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Trans-Atlantic a call involving Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower immediately after the
D-Day invasion. The WQXR news department won a Peabody Award for its
expanded newscasts during the newspaper strike of 1968. After retiring
from WQXR Radio at 65, he began a second career as a photojournalist.
His work appeared in Life magazine and other publications, and won
numerous awards. He traveled extensively, to India as a guest of the
Indian Tourist Board, and to Israel and Germany for photo shoots and
articles he wrote with his wife, Sylvia, a psychotherapist in White
Plains. With the coming of television, Grobe had an opportunity to
enter television broadcasting, but decided to remain behind the
microphone. His voice became well known in New York, as was his
introduction after a (live) gong at the top of each hour: "Every hour
on the hour, WQXR brings you the news from the NY Times Newsroom."
