Transcript

HALL OF FAME HONOREE

2009 INDUCTION

Robert C. Huber, CMC, CPCM Among Seven Delawareans

Inducted Into Mount Pleasant Hall of Fame

For Professional Achievements and Community Service

 Mount Pleasant High School

Wilmington, Delaware

October 23, 2009

Transcript

Mount Pleasant High School

Hall of Fame Award

October 23, 2009

Robert Huber was born in 1950 to Jane and Charles Huber of Wilmington, Delaware. 

During his senior year at Mount Pleasant High School, he co-founded WMPH-FM - the first F.C.C. licensed high school radio station in the State of Delaware. 

Bob earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration from Barrington College (Barrington, RI) where he founded and managed his second campus radio station. 

While living in New England, he managed 3 hotels, opened 45 Burger King restaurants in five states,  and was a graduate of Burger King University. 

In 1985, Mr. Huber developed the revolutionary "All-Campus Card" concept – which  transformed the use of student and employee ID cards to dynamic multi-application credentials at over 5,000 colleges, universities, hospitals, and corporate campuses throughout North America (including Harvard University, the Pennsylvania State University, University of Delaware). 

Such credentials now provide pre-authorized access for meals, library privileges, electronic door access, parking access, food operations, bookstores, vending machines, copiers, laundry machines, athletic games, cultural events, and local retail merchants. 

During his professional career, he started over 150 business operations, worked with over 200 colleges and universities, trained over 2,000 employees, and made hundreds of business presentations throughout the United States and Canada. 

Afflicted at age 20 with Crohn's Disease, he served for many years in leadership positions with the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America and the United Ostomy Associations of America, and became an outspoken advocate for the elimination of "pre existing conditions", legal importation of prescription medications, and the right of national healthcare for all Americans.

Robert Huber is an author, tennis enthusiast, chef, traveler, entrepreneur, volunteer, community leader, friend and advocate for others.

Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Huber.

Thank you very much.  I hope you can all hear me ... after all I was in broadcasting.

Well, this is a wonderful honor and I really wanted to give my special thanks to Kelli and Dave and everyone at Mount Pleasant and all the students here tonight.  I’m very impressed and so I’m glad you came out on a rainy Friday night.

We also have one special guest here who’s surprised Jesse and I.  She is one of the members of our class and also her father has been a legacy in broadcasting in Delaware for years – Wendy Holmes is here.  Her father, Roger Holmes, you might remember that name from being a veteran radio broadcasting in the Wilmington and Philadelphia markets at WIP, WDEL and WAMS. We are so pleased that Wendy out to join us tonight.

Imagination can be a very powerful and valuable personal tool that all of us can use.  You have education and education is very important but unless you do something with it, it just sits there dormant. 

Now just to prove this to you; you have an envelope that just magically appeared on your table.  Don’t open it yet, please. Now, what’s in that envelope?  It could be something you eat; it could be something that would make you scream.  It could be something that brings back memories.  It could even be a gift from Jesse Morris or even my mother who’s here tonight.  What’s in there?  While you just have to sit and try to imagine what that is.

Many people, when Jesse and I first had talked about WMPH, the story behind the story as Paul Harvey used to say was that Jesse and I had never spoken to each other and the morning of the student council breakfast which I don’t if it’s still a tradition here or not, but it was back then, and so several of us, my friends, went around to the various homes to get some free breakfast and we went to this one and this guy taps me on the shoulder and it was Jesse Morris. 

Now Jesse I had seen and Jesse had seen me but we had never spoken in our life before. 

But Jesse came up to me at his election breakfast, and said, “Did you read my planks that we have for our candidates?” 

Rather surprised that he actually knew who I was, I said, “Yes I had.” 

So he proceed to continue, “So did you see the one about the radio station?” 

Again I said, “Yes.” 

He then told me without missing a beat, “So when I get elected, would you head that up project for me?” 

And I said, “Sure.”

And later that day when we cast our votes for the Student Council tickets, I proceeded to vote for someone else.

Well I don’t know if anyone of you have ever seen the Robert Redford movie "The Candidate" who somebody that ran for public office and was guaranteed to loose and then they won and the famous line at the end of the movie is “What will I do now?” 

Well, then Jesse won the Student Council Election!

And would you believe, the following day, he came looking for me.

And as pointedly as our last conversation, he said, “Okay, Bob, when are we going to start building this radio station?” 

Well, since I had given him my word, I really didn't have much choice but to say, “Sure … I guess, we’ll just have to figure it out.” 

So within a few days, Jesse setup a meeting with our Principal, Dr. John Michalecewitz.  And I suppose, that Mr. Wayne Polari was there too.  You see he was the Vice Principal and was known throughout the halls as "the Enforcer." 

And I don’t know how quite how, within a few weeks we had an attorney in Washington at a very large broadcasting legal firm.

Although I had some A/V (audio/visual) background, broadcast our church services, I didn’t really know (at that time) … how to build radio station. 

But Dr. Michalecewitz said, “Don’t worry about it. I'm going to get a broadcasting lawyer in Washington, D.C. and they will help us out … so we can apply for an FCC licens.

So we set up what are to be known as conference calls, me and the attorney every week.

The only thing is the only phone in the school that could call long distance was in the Principal's Office.

And so he arranged that once a week I would go into his office, shut his door, he would dial the number and then he would leave.  

And so it was very interesting I spent one hour each week with the attorney there the whole full semester.

It was also very interesting to watch people’s eyes when I came out of that office from a closed-door in the Principal’s Office each week … smiling! 

Dr. Michalecewitz was just so supportive as a mentor and then as a supporter before the board and helped us anyway he possibly could.

I understand that Dr. Michaelcewitz is at a wedding tonight; otherwise he would have been here.  At least we got a chance to meet last year during our Class Reunion, along with Mr. Wayne Polari, which both helped us and WMPH in so many ways – some of them we knew and other we never did.

And so he was probably one of the key people that really helped the station. 

Also Clint Dantinne has been a lifesaver. 

You know, I live in Scottsdale, Arizona where it’s a little drier and a little warmer and if you’ve ever seen the symbol of Phoenix, that is really of a bird and it’s called "The Phoenix" … which means "Rising out of the ashes!"

When Clint Dantinne came 15 years ago, the station had been shut down for 2 years.  Because things were set on the air later at night that should’ve been said and since this is a federally-regulated organization that different people said, “We better shut in down or we’ll end up crying,” but in fact, they actually loss the license. 

Clint came in, resurrected that and just like out of the ashes and really has been an advocate for this and the station really would not been on the air today without him.

And lastly to my colleague, Dr. Jesse Morris for really having faith in me.  Although I did work in broadcasting for about 6 months - but that was not our goal for WMPH.

It was Jesse’s concept and our joint vision and spirited imagination. It was never our goal to simply start a club. 

We always perceived WMPH as a business organization and not intended for students to go into broadcasting.  It was just a good activity. 

I went on to build another radio station at my college (WBCW) – which never had an FCC license, but we actually hooked into the campus electrical system as an antenna.

We were on-the-air "live", 20 hours a day.  I had about 50 people working for me, learned a lot of management skills, made a lot of my management mistakes at that time, went on to run hotels.

After college, I worked in several hotels and then opened 45 restaurants which were rated #1 in the world by Burger King. 

And many of you have heard I invented a concept of which I wish I had patented, simply called the "All-Campus Card".

So any of you thinking of going to any college where you get a campus card that you uses on meal plan, you can use a debit card, you can use in vending machine, you can use for door access. 

These are all things that I was trying to convince my client, Thomas Jefferson University, where I was earlier today.  In fact, we have a couple of Thomas Jefferson graduates here tonight. 

I deal with my client's challenges, like combining 50 different forms of campus and hospital identification cards … and combine them into one single card. 

I work every week with clients … to try to get them to imagine.

So if you or any of your children ever use a campus or employee ID card, in a hospital or college or university for many purposes, well  that’s what I invented. 

And many of those ideas all came from working at WMPH. 

That experience really gave me the opportunity to use my imagination … and my education.

With all that mentoring that I had here at Mount Pleasant, I have been able to do some amazing things.

I don’t know what my "next chapters" will be about … but I owe a lot to Mount Pleasant and everyone who worked with me during those formulative years.  

Thank you again for this very special lifetime honor.

Transcript Edited For Contextual Clarity

by Robert C. Huber (5/2014)

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 Kelli and David Bradley

Special thanks to Kelli and Dave Bradley, faculty instructors at Mount Pleasant High School, who have devoted countless hours to the organization, management, promotion and preservation of the Hall of Fame over the past decade. The Mount Pleasant Hall of Fame was created in 2005 to coincide with the community celebration of the 175th anniversary of the historic Mount Pleasant Schoolhouse. Their creation of the Mount Pleasant Hall of Fame has not only honored its recipients, but their families, friends, alumni and community and thereby leaves Delaware residents with a historic legacy for which others may aspire in the future.

Clint Dantinne

Clint deserves special acknowledgement by the WMPH-FM Founders (Jesse Morris & Robert Huber) for his preservation, promotion and serving for nearly two decades as General Manager. Under his leadership, Delaware's first educational FM radio station is now heard around the world and has positively affected thousands of high school students and community residents for nearly 50 years of landmark radio broadcasting history. Thanks also to Clint for his distinctive audio and video productions at the Mount Pleasant Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies since their commencement.

www.ClintDantinne.com

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