1909-1990

My Friend and Mentor

  From youth until ill health forced Gene Hubbell to enter a nursing home, he had a deep and productive interest in radio. Gene was born in 1909 and passed away in Scottsdale in November 1990. Active in police, military, or ham radio during most of those years, he established a record that will be in the minds of people for a long time.

Gene gave a lot of credit to the American Radio Institute in Milwaukee for his early success in radio. After graduating from Rockford High School in Illinois, he worked in industry for several years. Eventually he was able to go to Milwaukee for the special training that would lead him to a career in communications, to winning the Bronze Star, and to the authorship of some two dozen technical radio articles.

In 1927, Gene got his first ham license. His was the ninth license issued in the Ninth District by the Federal Radio Commission which later became the Federal Communications Commission. On Oct. 10, 1929, he won his first of many awards when he became one of 10 stations handling the most birthday messages for Hiram Percy Maxim, founder of the American Radio Relay League. A letter from Maxim became Gene's first trophy.

In 1930, Gene won the very first radio sweepstakes competition, and in 1931, he won the first ARRL certificate of accuracy in frequency measurement.

Where did he get his remarkable drive and his determination to build on what he had learned? Maybe it was hereditary, or maybe it was instilled in him by his service in the Naval Reserve, which he joined in 1929 and served in until 1934.

In 1936 Gene entered the ARRL Central Division Code Speed Contest in the Sherman Hotel in Chicago and set a new record of 52.2 words per minute. He was awarded a beautiful, large silver trophy that he later kept in his ham shack.

In 1937, Gene won his most treasured trophy, the hand in marriage of Robbie Christine Scott, a talented legal secretary in the state attorney's office in Rockford. Robbie remained Gene's loyal and devoted helpmate through 53 years of marriage, business, and hamming.

In the mid-1930's, the Rockford Police Department decided to do more with radio communications, and they hired Gene to help them build a transmitter. Once on the air, the department kept Gene to run the transmitter for the sergeant on duty and to keep a log of transmissions. He also had to keep the equipment working, all of which required 12 hours every day, seven days a week.

When the world was on the brink of World War II, Gene went to Chicago, taught radio, and took courses at the university. After one series of courses, the Army commissioned Gene a second lieutenant. He was assigned to the OSS and served some time in Washington, scrambling communications to other Western capitals. When the war was well under way, he was sent to Italy to supervise three OSS stations that worked with agents behind enemy lines. On one occasion, it was necessary for Gene to supervise the moving of agent circuits from Caserta to Rome and back to Caserta between April 12 and Sept. 4, 1942, and he accomplished these moves without losing any agent circuits. The success of this important operation won Gene the Bronze Star.

Once the war was over, Gene turned his attention to business communications and ham radio. He and Robbie and a lawyer acquaintance formed a corporation to sell electronic parts to ham operators 'and to businesses. Gene fired up the old rig at home whenever he could find the time, working the world.

In 1954, when radio teletype was very new to American ham radio, Gene won a Department of Defense certificate for copying an Armed Forces Day message on radio teletype. In 1957, he was given a Public Service Award for conducting a search by radio for a 9-year-old girl who had disappeared along the Kishwakee River, a farming area near Rockford

In 1960, Gene and Robbie sold their interest in their electronics business and moved to Scottsdale. They bought a home on 21/2 acres of land, and Gene proceeded to build up what the Arizona Republic called "one of the most elaborate and sophisticated amateur radio stations to be seen anywhere."

Gene's antenna farm featured a 40 meter beam that he built himself, "lock, stock, and barrel," and placed atop a 72-foot tower. This yagi beam with its 70-foot aluminum elements enabled Gene to contact other hams all over the world.

Over the years, Gene published several technical articles in QST and other radio magazines.

Sitting in his shack, Gene looked like he could go on for a long time, but in 1984 a heart condition required surgery, and his health deteriorated. Gene entered the nursing home with Alzheimer's. Watching this kind man lay in his nursing home bed for five years was difficult. I wanted so much to ask him questions that I knew he could no longer answer. Robbie sat next to Gene, from sun up to sun down, every day until the day he died. Robbie took Gene's body back to Rockford Illinois to be buried. She stayed in Rockford to be near Gene.