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."