this is dedication.

Loud and Clear : 1922

Lester Picker listens to his shortwave radio through earphones while convalescing after breaking his back when he fell 55 feet erecting an aerial for the radio. Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, April 18, 1922. View full image. (Updated with additional information on Lester — click here and scroll down

Lester
Submitted by Ham Radio Curmudgeon on Sun, 11/11/2007 - 5:30pm.

Excellent info, Dave. Thanks for clearing up all the mystery.

73 de Ham Radio Curmudgeon
(sorry, I learned long ago to not use my call letters on the net.)

* reply

Lester Picker, 6AJH and 6ZH
Submitted by Dave on Sun, 11/11/2007 - 1:53pm.

Lester was a licensed shortwave (or "ham") radio operator who achieved national fame after his fall. From the Brownsville (Texas) Daily Herald of April 25, 1922:

The Decatur (Illinois) Sunday Review of April 16, 1922:

From the Oakland Tribune of March 11, 1923:

FAN BREAKS BACK BUT GRADUATES BY AID OF RADIO

San Ysidro Youth Addresses Class by Air; Whole Coast Is Friend

(By a Listener-In)

SAN YSIDRO, Calif., March 10 — There is not an amateur up and down the Pacific Coast who will not cut in and answer when he hears amateur radio station 6ZH calling.

These call letters, meaningless to so many radio fans, have a deeper significance in the hearts of dot-and-dash amateurs. They know that 6ZH is the only one among them who has the right to be lonely. “How are things tonight?” they say. Sometimes they pause for a lengthy chat. Their reward, though unseen, is a smile lighting up the face on a pillow thousands of miles away.

At the word of greeting a hand will reach to the bedside and fondle an old brass key. There is a splutter, the tubes light up, and singing back through the ether comes 6ZH’s answer: “Fine, Old Man. How are you?”

Down on his luck, but what of that? — 6ZH Lester Picker, District Superintendent of the American Radio Relay League, has brought the whole world to his bedside and you will find him there in the evening with his chin up, talking to his pals of the A.R.R.L. along the coast.

He knows most of them, the amateurs, from Vancouver to the Gulf and now and then he will seek out an old friend to the banks of the Mississippi. There is fun in distance when you measure your own movements by inches. If there is anyone who can get action out of his [illegible], Picker and his signal is like the crack of the whip.

There is much to take into account, of course, if it were not for amateur radio in the first place. Picker would not be lying there with that ache in his back, but still, if it were not for radio, life would be lonely.

And, yes, here is another thing, too: it was amateur radio that enabled Picker to be graduated with the rest of his class at the Roosevelt Memorial High School in San Diego. The accident happened only a short time before the exercises and he was due to receive his diploma with the rest.

A rather difficult situation, you might think, for a chap whose back was broken, yet the seemingly impossible was accomplished and not only is the diploma hanging on the wall, where 6ZH can glance at it proudly, but he also gave an address from the platform of the auditorium. The chair where Picker was to sit with his classmates was vacant, but who will say he was not there? At a word from Principal T. A. Russell, someone telephoned a San Diego amateur, who relayed the message by radio to 6ZH; a switch was thrown in and a hush fell over the auditorium, while the eyes of those present turned toward a big horn on the stage.

“Picker,” thought his classmates, and listened carefully. In the next few minutes, there was no other sound except Picker’s voice, not until he signed off, at least, with his customary “Goodnight, Station 6ZH.”

Even on this eventful night, he clung to his old familiar call, and in the interval, he told of the pleasure which it gave him to be graduated with the others in his class and expressed the hope that he might join sometime his mates of ’23 and talk over experiences.

And now you must wonder why Picker did not fill the chair on the platform that night. One day he was installing a new 55-foot mast at his new station and the guy wires broke. “Radio again,” you say.

But now you know why the amateur radio “ops” listen when he calls.

And finally, from the "A.R.R.L. Events" column of the Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat, March 18, 1925:

Lester Picker, 6ZH, has received his O. W. L. S. appointment and has already begun to sign his wavelength after communications.

thanks to whomever found the info.