Alden Aaroe
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Alden Peterson Aaroe (May 5, 1918 - July 7, 1993) was a popular longtime broadcast journalist and announcer for WRVA, a radio station in Richmond, Virginia.
[edit] Career
Aaroe worked for more than 40 years at WRVA, an AM radio station known as the "50,000 watt Voice of Virginia". As a radio personality, Aaroe is best remembered[citation needed] for his news reporting and his bantering with a fictional duck called Millard the Mallard during morning rush hour in Richmond during the 1970s. Aaroe also founded the WRVA-Salvation Army Shoe Fund, which provides shoes for needy children and has raised $5.6 million in its 36 year history. In 1986, Virginia Governor Gerald Baliles proclaimed Alden Aaroe Day in honor of his public service.
In 1993, Alden Aaroe died of cancer after a long illness and was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery. The Shoe Fund, now called the WRVA/Salvation Army Alden Aaroe Shoe Fund, still provides approximately 2,500 children with new shoes each year.
[edit] Honors
- In 1994, the Senate and House of Delegates of the Virginia General Assembly passed a joint resolution honoring the late Aaroe for "his contributions to the field of broadcasting and his lifetime service to the people of the Commonwealth."
- In 1994, the book Alden Aaroe: Voice of the Morning (ISBN 0-87517-072-2) was written and published by Richmond-Times-Dispatch feature columnist Steve Clark.
- A street in the Church Hill section of Richmond, Alden Aaroe Way, was named for Aaroe. It is a cul-de-sac with a small park adjacent to the former WRVA studios and it overlooks Shockoe Bottom and the Virginia State Capitol on Capitol Hill.
- In 1994, the Alden Aaroe Scholarship for journalism students at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond was established in Aaroe's honor by his widow Frances Aaroe.
- At the Library of Virginia in Richmond, WRVA sound recordings and other artifacts were the subject of a major online exhibit. Included in this exhibit was a pair of Aaroe's shoes.
