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La biografia de Don Joaquín Agusty...

Don Joaquin Agusty was born under the Spanish flag on November 19, 1891 in the township of El Rosario between the municipalities of Mayagüez and San German. He was born into an agrarian society; a world of coffee plantations, laborers, cooks, and ancestral homes.  He was the son of Antonio Agusti y Sabater and Maria Antonia Ramirez de Arellano y Capielo.

During its coffee heyday, toward the end of the 19th century, Puerto Rico was the sixth largest coffee producer in the world. Fully half the island population was involved in cultivating and exporting the crop.  Participating in this endeavor was Don Joaquin's paternal grandfather, Joaquin Domingo Benito Agusti y Bas, a Spaniard from Sant Feliu de Guixols in Gerona, Spain.

By 1836, Don Joaquin's grandfather was residing in a coffee plantation called La Rosita located between the townships of Buena Vista and Maravilla in the municipality of Las Marias.

On December 10 , 1898 the Treaty of Peace in Paris was signed. Ignoring the charter of autonomy made with Puerto Rico a year before, Spain ceded Puerto Rico and its dependent islets to the United States, renounced all claims to Cuba and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20,000,000.

The island was officially ceded to the United States on September 29.  The Spanish withdrawal from Puerto Rico would be complete by October 18 as the final troops left San Juan for Spain.  General John R. Brooke became the first United States military governor of the island.

By 1899, Puerto Rico was under the military control of the United States of America.

In the first years of U.S. military occupation, political and economic power were centered in San Juan and all former Spanish administrative bodies were dismantled.  Most local landowners lost their economic power to North American companies which came to own the principal centers of agricultural production. This would eventually impact Don Joaquin's family plantation.

The federal military forces changed the name of the island to Porto Rico (it would be changed back to Puerto Rico in 1932) and the currency was changed from the Puerto Rican peso to the United States dollar.

Many other changes took place. Freedom of assembly, speech, press, and religion were decreed and an eight-hour day for government employees was established. A public school system was started and the U.S. Postal service was extended to the Island. The highway system was enlarged, and bridges over the more important rivers were constructed. The government lottery was abolished, cockfighting was forbidden and a beginning was made toward the establishment of a centralized public health system.

As a child, Don Joaquin attended Don Miguel Cintron's elementary school.  He was very inquisitive; interested in what was hidden or put away. He was always wanting to know the "why" of everything. He didn't like not knowing, not understanding, not being able to solve.

He tells a story in which he admits he enjoyed as a young boy listening to the ghost stories and other similar ones told by the laborers and that they scared him because to him these were mysteries he could not solve nor comprehend. Since then he would never enter a place alone at night, not even the balcony in the darkness. To go to the latrine at night, which was located at the other end of the kitchen, the cook would have to accompany him with a candle in the candleholder and wait for him in the kitchen.

He loved papers and books, numbers and yes, cartoons. His grandmother received overseas mail via "Ultramar" and he would spend hours on end reading it.  He had developed an obsession with registering everything and examining everything he found that was new to him. His grandmother would answer him the hundreds of questions he would make every day, since neither his mother nor father did - they did not let him snoop around.

All these traits would help him navigate the changes to come and shape the man he became earning him a small place in history.

Don Joaquin's mother died in the year 1900.

With local landowners losing their economic power, it is likely that his father, Don Antonio, sent him to the city of Mayagüez to live with relatives and learn a more promising trade other than growing coffee.

The year 1910 finds Don Joaquin, living with his uncle, Juan Ramón Anzoátegui y Cristy, in the township of Sabalos in the municipality of Mayagüez. It was in Mayagüez where Don Joaquin became a skilled watchmaker / clockmaker under the instruction of Don Eliseo Defilló.

In 1911, Don Joaquin left Mayaguez, at the age of 19, for the capital of San Juan to work as a watchmaker / clockmaker, earning a monthly salary of $40.00, his first wages ever.

In San Juan, Don Joaquin rented a "mirador" (upper level room with walkout to a rooftop terrace) in a boarding house belonging to a widow named Doña Abigail Asencio and located on #3 San José Street in Old San Juan. She had a small child named Enrique Camuñas, whom Don Joaquin came to love and with whom he began collecting stamps.

The widow and her son offered Don Joaquin a home, food and hospitality. They encouraged him with his studies. He dedicated all of his spare time to teaching himself English which he got to master.

Don Joaquin ended up marrying the widow, and for 16 years, she was the beacon of his life until her death in 1931.

In 1914 the first Puerto Rican officers were assigned to the Executive Cabinet by the US President. One of them, Secretary Martin Travieso, would help Don Joaquin take on a job in 1916 with the government's Materials, Printing and Transportation Procurement Office at the Arsenal de la Puntilla in San Juan .

La Puntilla had been a Spanish Naval Arsenal. On August 20, 1901 it was reserved by the United States government for Naval purposes per Executive Order during the McKinley/Roosevelt administration.  It was at La Puntilla where Don Joaquin gained immense knowledge and where, during his lunch hours, he built his first galena crystal receiver.

On August 5, 1916, from the township of El Rosario, Don Antonio Agusty Sabater writes his son, Don Joaquin, who was now 24 years of age:

"Dear son, I'm glad you are doing well seeing how things are the way they are today and you have to fight for everything seeing how the country is heading in a direction that one won't be able to live in seeing how we have sugar at eight cents per pound and coffee which should be valuable is under-priced so it is useless for one to break his back working when one sometimes finds himself without a cent.

At his job at La Puntilla, Don Joaquin spent his leisure time reading electrical magazines, brochures and manuals which he ordered from the United States.

One day, in 1916, reading a catalog from the Electro Importing Company of New York, he happened upon instructions on building an electrical coil. Not long after, Don Joaquin, began installing on his rooftop apartment the radio equipment he had ordered from the United States. He spent hours at his work table.

"I had several batteries, an eletrical coil, galena crystals, bronze wires, a condenser, various metal plates and a pair of earphones", related Don Joaquin.

He made connections, twisted wires and did everything else dictated in the instruction manual. Don Joaquin then elevated an antenna on bamboo posts and placed it on the rooftop, awakening the curiosity of the capital's inhabitants and becoming the butt of jokes. After that came the prolonged days of waiting and the long hours of silence with his headphones.

One day, the silence was interrupted by the ear-splitting noise of continuous and bothersome screeches. Between the screeches, he could distinguish the coded messages sent by the US Naval Station at bus stop #8. His receiver worked!

Unfortunately, World War I interrupted Don Joaquin's amateur radio projects. Civilian radio activities were suspended during the war, as the radio industry was taken over by the government.

On March 2, 1917, the Jones Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. The law made Puerto Rico a U.S. territory which is "organized but unincorporated". It also makes all Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens.

In 1918, at the end of the war, Don Joaquin founded the "PORTO RICO RADIO CLUB" with other radio enthusiasts he had met. One of these men, Jesús T. Piñero, would become the first native Puerto Rican to be appointed governor of Puerto Rico by the government of the United States.

In 1919 the wartime restrictions were ended and Don Joaquin resumed his radio pursuits building a transmitter.

However, he had no one with which to communicate. In the nearby town of Carolina, his good friend Jesús T. Piñero could receive, but could not answer Don Joaquin's messages.

By 1920, members of the Club were still listening in on naval radio broadcasts, but they did not understand the codes and therefore what was being transmitted.  And so, they began to study the wireless telegraph codes.

Back then, to operate an amateur radio station, one needed to have an operator's license, issued by the Lieutenant Commander of the Navy.

In 1920 the Club's members studied for, and passed, tests to obtain their amateur radio licenses.

Don Joaquin's adoptive son, Enrique Camuñas, was the first one to obtain his license; Don Joaquin was the second one. Don Joaquin's call letters were "4JE" and Jesús T. Piñero's were "4KT" (the KP4 calls that would appear after the second World War did not exist then).

In 1922, the Porto Rico Radio Club printed its first information bulletin in English and Spanish called the "Porto Rico Radio News".

Puerto Rico's first radio station was the plan of the famed Behn brothers, Sosthenes and Hernand. They owned the Puerto Rico Radio and Telephone Company which eventually spawned the International Telephone and Telegraph company (ITT). Their personas live on in the bridge they built named "Dos Hermanos" (Two Brothers) connecting the Condado area with the capital of San Juan.

The Behn brothers knew of Don Joaquin, of his enthusiasm, of his experiments, his knowledge and his achievements. For these reasons, they offered him the post of manager and administrator of the station as well as stations' radio announcer.

Don Joaquin had "felt an immense happiness ever since I heard that the Behn brothers were going to install a radio station in Puerto Rico." However, he never thought he would be offered the position because he had "never seen a radio station in my life." He rejected the offer made by the Behn brothers.When Don Joaquin later accepted the second offer to manage the island's 1st radio station, he did so with great humility.

Don Joaquin's sign-on package consisted of paid vacations in the United States and a monthly salary of $250.00 (this is equivalent to a monthly salary of $2,750 in 2003, which, in 1922 Puerto Rico, was a great salary).

In August of 1922, the station installation started on an improvised 7th floor on the rooftop of the Telephone Company building in the corner of Tetuán and Tanca streets in San Juan.

On December 3 1922, the first transmission was made in Puerto Rico. Don Joaquin Agusty's first words were:

"Esta es WKAQ, San Juan, capital de Puerto Rico, la Isla del Encanto y donde se produce el mejor café" ("This is WKAQ, San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico, the Island of Enchantment and where the best coffee is grown.")

This phrase, coined by him, would become his standard opening in future programming.  Up until this point, movies and the theatre were the principal venues that filled the leisure hours of Puerto Ricans. The inauguration of WKAQ completely changed the scene.

Because almost nobody had the equipment to listen to all of this the establishments of the era, the restaurants "La Cafetera", "El Vesubio", "La Mallorquina" and others served as the stagess for transmissions. Many restaurants acquired radios so their clientele could listen to the WKAQ programs.

The first frequency used by WKAQ was 1,240 kilocycles oprating on 500 watts. Its programs prompted fan mail from as far away as Spain and Checkoslovakia.

WKAQ, which still exists on 580 kHz, remained the sole station in the island until 1934.

In 1931, at the age of 40, Don Joaquin married 17-year old Doña Olga Cintrón of San Juan who had worked as a secretary at the radio station. Their marriage lasted almost 42 years until his death.

By the start of the 1930's, WKAQ's station was considered obsolete and needed to be upgraded or replaced. The company was not inclined to bring a new station to the island. An engineer from the Telephone Company by the last name of Flanley appraised Don Joaquin of the situation.

Don Joaquin guaranteed Flanley that with a new station, they could go commercial. Flanley told Don Joaquin that if he could guarantee $1,000 in monthly revenues, he would do his best to influence the company in bringing new equipment. Don Joaquin guaranteed him $1,500.

The engineer left and, in 1932, the new station of 1,000 watts arrived to Puerto Rico. The station was installed in the same location and the old equipment was sent to the Telephone Company's warehouse at bus stop #14 in the city of Santurce. They began adding employees, including an Artistic Director, operators, and assistants. The transition to a comercial station became evident early on. Advertising agencies began to appear which produced commercials for WKAQ.

Once advertising agencies came in to the game, things changed. One of those agencies, stated Don Joaquin, was the Conquest Alliance, which promoted Kellogg. This agency started to take control of the commercials that came to WKAQ and they charged a commission. Don Joaquin protested, but his boss at the time, a Mr. Ogilvie, was friends with the people at Conquest.

Don Joaquin didn't think things looked well and left on vacation. Soon after, "they wrote me to inform me that my position had been eliminated due to budget constraints. And I was left out of WKAQ..." said Don Joaquin.

El Mundo Broadcasting Co. purchased the station in 1949.

Don Joaquin had managed to salvage the old equipment that had been moved to the warehouse at the Telephone Company and later thrown away. With it, he created his own Museum of the History of Radio in Puerto Rico. "When I die, all of this will end up in a dumpster..." said Don Joaquin. Not so!

Though many items in Don Joaquin's personal collection were sold after his death, in the late 1970's Doña Olga Agusty, widow of Don Joaquin, agreed to donate to University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez all the equipment of that first radio station along with other items Don Joaquin had collected in relation to the beginnings of radio in Puerto Rico. However, the days, weeks, months and years passed and the University did nothing with the donation. Doña Olga got the University to give back what had been donated. Unfortunately, some items were lost and never recovered due to years of inadequate storage.

In 1986, the Puerto Rico Broadcasters' Association unveiled a commemorative plaque at WKAQ's original location as part of the station's sixty-fouth anniversary and in which Don Joaquin's is recognized as its first director. In attendance at the ceremony were former San Juan Mayor Felisa Rincón Gautier, Secretary of State, Héctor Luis Acevedo and Doña Olga Cintrón Agusty, widow of the station's founder and first director, Joaquin Agusty.

A few years later, Doña Olga donated Don Joaquin's collection to the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. The Museo de la Radio (Museum of Radio) was established at La Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in the city of Santurce, Puerto Rico, during the Communications Fair in 1990. Today, the Museum occupies a place of honor at the University.

In 1980, Letzen Maldonado Agusty, one of Don Joaquin's grandchildren, discovered College Radio. Letzen worked as Disc Jockey and News Director for WNDN-FM at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC.

Though she didn't pursue a career in Radio, her interest in entertainment and information-sharing continues to this day.

Don Joaquin Agusty died on April 28, 1973, in the city of Guaynabo, at the age of 81, leaving behind his legacy in the history of radio in Puerto Rico. He was survived by a wife, 3 children and 7 grandchildren. His widow, Doña Olga, who forever remained in love with him, died in September 1998.

On the 20th and 21st of February 1993, the Puerto Rico Amateur Radio League sponsored by Radio Scan, held the largest hamfest ever celebrated in Puerto Rico. More than 1000 amateurs attended the activity at the Rubén Rodriguez Coliseum in Bayamón, PR. This activity was held "In memriam" of Don Joaquín Agusty. The symbolic ribbon that opened the  celebration was cut by Doña Olga Cintrón vda de Agusty, his beloved wife.

[Our Thanks to Letzen Maldonado-Agusty]

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