On April 16, 2007, photographer Alan Kim of the Roanoke Times snapped a photo of Kevin Sterne as four police officers hurriedly carried him from Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall after Seung-Hui Cho committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Sterne, an astute Eagle Scout who had tied a makeshift tourniquet around his leg to stop the bleeding of a ruptured artery, survived and is currently finishing his education as an electrical engineering master’s student at Virginia Tech.
Kim’s now famous photo of Sterne went around the world via the Associated Press wire service, symbolizing the brutality of the day. But the signature photo also became the stimulus for people to find out who Kevin Sterne was. Follow-up stories to the Virginia Tech tragedy identified Sterne as the chief engineer of the student-run radio station at Virginia Tech, with the call letters WUVT. Well-wishers discovered that Sterne, who had started at WUVT as a freshman electrical engineering and communications studies double major, was the technical genius who was keeping the FM station on the air.
As Sterne’s story unfolded, readers around the globe learned that WUVT was in dire straits in 2007. That January, the station’s ancient transmitter, located at the top of Lee Dormitory on the Virginia Tech campus, broke for the final time. WUVT was basically off the air, operating at a drastically reduced 5 to 10 watts instead of 3 kilowatts, reaching only about 10 percent of its listening audience.
One of the first sympathizers to respond to Kim’s photo and story was Steven Davis, a vice president of Clear Channel Communications of San Antonio, Texas. The company is the owner and operator of more than 1200 radio stations in the U.S. By May of 2007, Davis had secured the loan of a transmitter that completely restored WUVT’s audience.
But Davis was not done with his philanthropy. Next, he orchestrated the donation of a new transmitter valued at $20,000. This summer the transmitter will be activated at a new location, atop Price Mountain, near the Virginia Tech campus, allowing the station to operate at 6500 watts, according to Kelly Wolff, general manager of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, Inc. (EMCVT).
Wolff credited the public’s response to Sterne’s story as saving WUVT. “In January of 2007, the situation for WUVT was as dire as it gets,” she recalled. Within a few weeks of the publication of Sterne’s story and his dedication to the radio station, “several thousand dollars poured in,” Wolff added. Next, “Steve Davis flew to campus on May 7, 2007” followed by others from all over the country.
Today, Wolff believes the radio station has secured about $156,000 in donations in the two years since Kim’s photo was released. With volunteer labor she said the total is more like a quarter of a million dollars. The other well-wishers who responded after the AP wire photo included: Electronics Research, Inc., who retuned a Clear Channel antenna ($10,000); Orban who provided a Optimod FM 8500 ($14,000); Hammet and Edison who conducted a feasibility study ($8000); Harris who donated an exciter ($30,000); TFT, Inc., who gave a Digital STL ($20,000); Burk who provided $8000 in parts; and Heavener Hardware of Blacksburg that donated the use of a bobcat to clear the new site.
In addition, Jeff Parker orchestrated the transfer of an equipment building once owned by the Virginia State Police to Virginia Tech that could then be given to the radio station. “We had a great alumni network,” Sterne said today. “They were people we did not know about until after April 16, 2007. I recall talking to someone who called me while he was on vacation in Italy…And the WUVT staff gave me a Christmas present in 2007 with a special fundraiser that was a good showing of how much people cared.”
The building that came from the Virginia State Police was particularly significant to Sterne, rescued by their colleagues’ quick actions on April 16, 2007. “This 17 ½ ton building needed to be moved onto a concrete slab” with only an inch of leeway, he recalled. Lynchburg Crane Company came to the rescue, again through Parker’s influence, and managed to install the building to specifications on the new Price Mountain site, owned by the Virginia Tech Foundation. WUVT is sharing this site with another radio station, WBRW, which Sterne also credited for its help.
Sterne is now in his sixth year of working at WUVT, remaining with the station after he received his undergraduate degrees and while he is pursuing his master’s with the Space@VT research group. He started in 2003 as a disc jockey with a 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. jazz show on Tuesdays, the only shift available to a fledgling freshman. “It was rough, since my roommate always watched Monday night football,” he smiled.
By 2006, Sterne was selected as the chief engineer, and spent a lot of time on the rooftop of Lee Hall, a place he recalled as being “very hot and very dirty.” During the summers the rooftop could reach 135 degrees, according to Wolff, and this environment led to numerous problems in maintaining the transmitter. At the end of the spring semester of 2009, Sterne finally handed off the title of chief engineer, ending what he called “a pretty wild ride.”
He still spends 15 to 20 hours a week at the station as he wants to see the results of philanthropy that Kim’s picture generated. His tenure at WUVT is fairly unique as it usually has new leaders each year. But Sterne acknowledged “there was always something new to learn at WUVT.”
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