Brenau University Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of the campus radio station, WBCX-FM, by paying homage to its founder, Clara Martin.
As part of the Alumnae Weekend activities, a reception was held in the lobby of the John W. Jacobs Building, celebrating Martin’s life and impact on Brenau University.
“She has left indelible marks on the Brenau landscape,” said President Ed Schrader. “Those marks continue today as we celebrate the twin 40th anniversaries of our flagship radio station 89.1 WBCX and what is today our Mass Communications Department, neither of which would exist without entrepreneurial spirit, high standards of excellence and dogged determination of Clara Martin.”
Martin, who currently lives in Brookhaven, Georgia, joined Brenau in 1971 as a special events director. She led efforts to start the university’s mass communications program. The first classes began in 1976, the same year WBCX went on the air.
WBCX is actually Brenau’s second radio station. The university’s first station, WKAY, went live in 1922, making it not only the first radio station in Gainesville, but one of the first radio stations in the entire country to receive a license from the Federal Communications Commission. Brenau’s first foray into broadcasting only lasted a few years. However, WBCX is still going strong four decades later. In fact, the radio station’s current director, Jay Andrews, is one of Martin’s former students.
All three of Martin’s daughters attended Brenau, but that isn’t her only legacy at the university. Upon her retirement in 2000, she used her last paycheck to start the Clara Martin Endowed Journalism Scholarship. “I couldn’t leave Brenau without leaving something behind,” Martin said.
