Ridge Meadows Recycling Society’s Repair Café worked its magic last weekend, and fixed up an old radio, reigniting a family’s memories 70 years after grandfather and owner of the radio first brought the radio home.
The Repair Café event at the Senior Center on Feb. 19 in Maple Ridge showcased what Aimee Bucholtz calls “a miracle” when a family radio got a new lease of life at the cafe.
“A wonderful gentleman by the name of Dave Koehn worked on it and somehow worked his magic as the radio began to play. Let’s just say he was over the moon just about as we were having heard my grandmas story,” said Bucholtz, as she dove into the stories of the radio’s origins.
Bucholtz’s great grandfather back in the 1930’s purchased a little radio at a local Haney store called Morris Electric, and when he passed away, it was one of the only possessions his only daughter, Bucholtz’s grandma Beverly Langston had of his.
“It then lived on her dining table as I was growing up. I used to play with the four buttons at the top and wonder why one had a red mark. I also knew it had dings on it too from being so old. Unfortunately about 15 years ago my grandma Bev had a garage sale at her home and had her radio playing so she could listen to her oldies while she greeted all those who stopped to garage sale. Due to my grandmas misfortune the radio was stolen and we never knew what had happened to it,” she said.
On Feb. 18 this year, Bucholtz found herself at the antique village shop in Fort Langley and sitting behind a table on the floor was the radio with the red button, “dings and all”. She brought the radio home, cleaned it up but couldn’t get it to work. So she asked her mother to bring it to the senior centre at the repair café event.
On their way back from the event once the radio was fixed, Bucholtz’s parents Lolly and Denis Sheppard left the radio playing all the way home, afraid it would stop working.
“Due to my treasure of a find and Dave’s help at the event many beautiful tears were shed 70 years later by my grandmother in complete shock and happiness that she got her dads radio back and working. Thank you to Dave for making an old lady’s day and bringing a working piece of history back to our family,” she said.
The next repair café event will be held on Mar. 26, followed by an event on Apr. 23 and May 21. All information for upcoming repair cafes can be found on www.mrrepaircafe.ca.
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