From TALKERS

Mr. Barry Farber

Talk Radio Pioneer Barry Farber Being Honored by Hungarian Government for Role Assisting Refugees of 1956 Revolt. 

This Saturday, talk radio pioneer Barry Farberis being honored in Budapest, Hungary for his role in helping Hungarians revolting against Soviet oppression escape from Hungary into Austria.  Faber was one of two correspondents for the Greensboro Daily News at the Austro-Hungarian border in October of 1956.  Farber met an old friend from Norway who was part of a team of Norwegians assisting fleeing Hungarians.  Farber volunteered on the spot to work the “Freedom Navy” – an old rubber raft with two oars.  When the refugees, about forty at a time, would gather on the Hungarian side of the border canal the two oarsmen would row across, load the boat with about five refugees at a time.  They would pull the raft over to the Austrian side.  Then the oarsmen would row back and repeat the process. Farber and the others helped about 200 refugees out on Christmas night of 1956.  Hungarian Consul-General Ferenc Kuminreports that the government asked Hungarian communities around the world to look for people who’d taken part in the refugee exodus.  Of all the names on the 60^th anniversary, Barry Farber is the one still alive!  Farber, who still hosts a show on CRN Digital Talk Radio, says, “We owe the Hungarians big time.  That heroic freedom fight marked communism’s high-water mark.  Things went steadily downhill from there.”

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Many of you will know I am frequently a guest on Barry's CRN daily show. Our friendship developed when he had a national daily show with ABC from 1990 on through the decade and I was a frequent caller.  I was then living in Santa Barbara and at odds with "the establishment" as they were opposed to our connecting to the California State Water aqueduct system believing it would cause expansion and reduce the value of their real estate!  I documented it would not in my analysis for my book, "Drought In Paradise," now on sale at Amazon.com

Barry's show demonstrated the power of the medium and inspired me to get my own local show. I had an FCC Commercial Broadcasting license from my college day as I had been working for the college paper that had an on campus radio station and had to have a certain number of FCC license holders on staff.  I could pass the test.

I never had show there, but having the license helped me get my own show in Santa Barbara as I could operate the transmitter legally at no cost to the station. The bond measure passed and the local paper listed me as one of the ten reasons the measure passed!  From that day I could not borrow a Dollar in that town in spite of the fact the man who owned the leading bank was a fan of mine as he agreed with my economic analysis.  We live in a strange, complicated world.  

Adrian