He's one of New York City's foremost culture vultures, but his preferred nickname remains "The Square from Delaware."

Gregg Whiteside, AS '70, chief announcer and manager of radio station WQXR-FM, New York's premier classical music radio station, sounds European as he rattles off the melodic names of the pieces he plays on the air. In between songs, while verbally sparring with newscaster Sam Hall, Whiteside's alter ego–the True Blue football fan and UD supporter–never misses a chance to put in a good word for his alma mater.

Millions of Americans wake up to Bright and Early With Gregg Whiteside, which airs from 5:30-10 a.m., weekdays, and garners a larger share of the New York City market than competitors Howard Stern and Don Imus.

Even more radio listeners know Whiteside as "the voice" of London's Royal Opera, the Kirov Ballet and Opera from St. Petersburg, Russia, and the New York Philharmonic's live Thursday night concerts that are broadcast from Avery Fischer Hall at the Lincoln Center. All these special programs are broadcast on numerous classical stations across the country.

Whiteside also is a substitute announcer for Peter Allen, the "voice" of New York's Metropolitan Opera's radio broadcasts, and is the commercial voice for the New York City Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He also is an on-camera host of WNET/ Channel 13's MetroArts cable channel and was narrator of the PBS special, Pavarotti and the Italian Tenor.

Whiteside gets fan mail from the likes of Woody Allen, Joanne Woodward and Gloria Vanderbilt. Ironically, the only people without access to a classical station that carries him are residents of Delaware, including Whiteside's parents.

Last spring, however, WQXR began making broadcasts available over the Internet [http://www.wqxr. com/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html], and Whiteside returned to Delaware one weekend to set up a computer for his parents, who now can join his throng of listening fans.

A classical music aficionado since the age of 13, when a family friend gave him an old stereo and recordings, Whiteside majored in English at UD. While he tried his best to recruit floormates away from The Beatles and into Bach, he never thought of making classical music his career.

"Anyone who was ever my roommate knows I loved to talk," he says, but broadcasting never entered his mind as a career. His only goal was "to be an educated man and to learn how to think."

"People often ask me if I was educated at Harvard or Oxford, and I'm always quick to recommend UD," he says.

After graduating, Whiteside decided to travel around the world. Studying the Asian language prior to a stint in the Peace Corps, he fell in love with his teacher, Hyon Ko, after hearing her sing Schubert in perfect German. The two married and have a son, Dean, a violinist, pianist and athlete.

After editing a newspaper in Australia and writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Whiteside and his wife returned to the States in the 1970s and settled in northern New Jersey. There, they began listening to WQXR. Whiteside quickly became a fan, but found the announcers a tad on the dry side.

"Here were these boring announcers introducing this very passionate, sexy music," he says. "It just didn't fit. I began to wonder what would happen if I became an announcer. I decided to try to talk my way into an audition and show them the way I thought it should be done."

Whiteside auditioned for Duncan Perry, the legendary station manager who launched the careers of the likes of Bennett Cerf and Alexander Scourby (an actor famous for his books on tape for the blind).

Perry handed Whiteside a ponderous, 40-page audition script full of run-on sentences and works in five languages. He asked him how many weeks he wanted to study it. Whiteside replied that a half hour would do. Needless to say, he ended up being the only thirtysomething working at a station populated with 60-year-olds.

Some say that was the start of the evolution of classical music radio from its staid and stuffy past to its high-tech, listener-friendly present.

Now, as station manager, Whiteside uses the same script to audition hopeful newcomers, and he has broken new ground hiring women announcers. It's his belief that, "In New York, you're either in the penthouse or the outhouse, there's no mediocrity."

Whiteside considers himself a "nuts and bolts broadcaster" who enjoys putting a show together on the fly, fleshing it out as the morning goes on.

"If you over-prepare, the show can go flat," he says.

"You have to have a good mix of talk, music and personality, but less is more in radio. A good announcer knows when to stop talking. People will turn you off if you just go on and on. I like to think of the show as the soundtrack to the busy lives of important people.

"We have to make sure our management team is satisfied, the FCC is satisfied and that our elite, upscale, powerful and influential listeners are satisfied. As the classical music station of The New York Times, we also have a proud and demanding parent company," he says.

By all accounts, the satisfaction level is very high. Whiteside has been honored for his contributions to broadcasting by the states of New Jersey and New York and has received awards for elevating the standards of broadcasting from the University of Connecticut and Columbia, Rutgers and Fairleigh Dickinson universities, among others.

With the launching of the web site, the station ran a "What does Gregg Whiteside look like?" contest, challenging fans to guess the popular announcer's appearance a week before his photo was to be posted. The majority of the responses from his many fans were unabashedly gushing and included such coments as "adorable," "suave and good looking," "a hunk" and "If he's as hot as he sounds, give him my phone number."

Founded in 1936, WQXR-FM (96.3) was the nation's first commercial classical music radio station, and since 1944, it has been owned and operated by The New York Times Co. It is the most listened-to classical station in the United States and features regular news, analysis, and commentary, often by Times correspondents. * --Beth Thomas

He's one of New York City's foremost culture vultures, but his preferred nickname remains "The Square from Delaware."

Gregg Whiteside, AS '70, chief announcer and manager of radio station WQXR-FM, New York's premier classical music radio station, sounds European as he rattles off the melodic names
of the pieces he plays on the air. In between songs, while verbally sparring with newscaster Sam Hall, Whiteside's alter ego–the True Blue football fan and UD supporter–never misses a chance to put in a good word for his alma mater.

Millions of Americans wake up
to Bright and Early With Gregg Whiteside, which airs from 5:30-10 a.m., weekdays, and garners a larger share of the New York City market than competitors Howard Stern
and Don Imus.

Even more radio listeners know Whiteside as "the voice" of London's Royal Opera, the Kirov Ballet and Opera from St. Petersburg, Russia, and the New York Philharmonic's live Thursday night concerts that are broadcast from Avery Fischer Hall at the Lincoln Center. All these special programs are broadcast on numerous classical stations across the country.

Whiteside also is a substitute announcer for Peter Allen, the "voice" of New York's Metropolitan Opera's radio broadcasts, and is the commercial voice for the New York City Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He also is an on-camera host of WNET/ Channel 13's MetroArts cable channel and was narrator of the PBS special, Pavarotti and the Italian Tenor.

Whiteside gets fan mail from the likes of Woody Allen, Joanne Woodward and Gloria Vanderbilt. Ironically, the only people without access to a classical station that carries him are residents of Delaware, including Whiteside's parents.

Last spring, however, WQXR began making broadcasts available over the Internet [http://www.wqxr. com/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html], and Whiteside returned to Delaware one weekend to set up a computer for his parents, who now can join his throng of listening fans.

A classical music aficionado since the age of 13, when a family friend gave him an old stereo and recordings, Whiteside majored in English at UD. While he tried his best to recruit floormates away from The Beatles and into Bach, he never thought of making classical music his career.

"Anyone who was ever my roommate knows I loved to talk," he says, but broadcasting never entered his mind as a career. His only goal was "to be an educated man and to learn how to think."

"People often ask me if I was educated at Harvard or Oxford, and I'm always quick to recommend UD," he says.

After graduating, Whiteside decided to travel around the world. Studying the Asian language prior to a stint in the Peace Corps, he fell in love with his teacher, Hyon Ko, after hearing her sing Schubert in perfect German. The two married and have a son, Dean, a violinist, pianist and athlete.

After editing a newspaper in Australia and writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Whiteside and his wife returned to the States in the 1970s and settled in northern New Jersey. There, they began listening to WQXR. Whiteside quickly became a fan, but found the announcers a tad on the dry side.

"Here were these boring announcers introducing this very passionate, sexy music," he says. "It just didn't fit. I began to wonder what would happen if I became an announcer. I decided to try to talk my way into an audition and show them the way I thought it should be done."

Whiteside auditioned for Duncan Perry, the legendary station manager who launched the careers of the likes of Bennett Cerf and Alexander Scourby (an actor famous for his books on tape for the blind).

Perry handed Whiteside a ponderous, 40-page audition script full of run-on sentences and works in five languages. He asked him how many weeks he wanted to study it. Whiteside replied that a half hour would do. Needless to say, he ended up being the only thirtysomething working at a station populated with 60-year-olds.

Some say that was the start of the evolution of classical music radio from its staid and stuffy past to its high-tech, listener-friendly present.

Now, as station manager, Whiteside uses the same script to audition hopeful newcomers, and he has broken new ground hiring women announcers. It's his belief that, "In New York, you're either in the penthouse or the outhouse, there's no mediocrity."

Whiteside considers himself a "nuts and bolts broadcaster" who enjoys putting a show together on the fly, fleshing it out as the morning goes on.

"If you over-prepare, the show can go flat," he says.

"You have to have a good mix of talk, music and personality, but less is more in radio. A good announcer knows when to stop talking. People will turn you off if you just go on and on. I like to think of the show as the soundtrack to the busy lives of important people.

"We have to make sure our management team is satisfied, the FCC is satisfied and that our elite, upscale, powerful and influential listeners are satisfied. As the classical music station of The New York Times, we also have a proud and demanding parent company," he says.

By all accounts, the satisfaction level is very high. Whiteside has been honored for his contributions to broadcasting by the states of New Jersey and New York and has received awards for elevating the standards of broadcasting from the University of Connecticut and Columbia, Rutgers and Fairleigh Dickinson universities, among others.

With the launching of the web site, the station ran a "What does Gregg Whiteside look like?" contest, challenging fans to guess the popular announcer's appearance a week before his photo was to be posted. The majority of the responses from his many fans were unabashedly gushing and included such coments as "adorable," "suave and good looking," "a hunk" and "If he's as hot as he sounds, give him my phone number."

Founded in 1936, WQXR-FM (96.3) was the nation's first commercial classical music radio station, and since 1944, it has been owned and operated by The New York Times Co. It is the most listened-to classical station in the United States and features regular news, analysis, and commentary, often by Times correspondents. * --Beth Thomas

"We tend to think of our life as Little House on the Prairie," says nurse and homemaker Jenny Robeson Houser, HNS '86, who with her veterinarian husband, Mike, is raising four young daughters on a savannah in West Africa.

As a missionary couple, the Housers live in a house without electricity or telephone lines, and all of their appliances, including a wringer washer, are powered by gas. Solar panels help power small fans for sleeping in the hot nights. A generator gives them light and hot water in the evenings, and every Friday night, they pop a video in the VCR for their one night of television watching. During the rainy season (May to October), their only means of mail delivery is by helicopter. During the dry season, they rely on rainwater collected in a cistern behind the house.

"That's a little tough. We have to lug it in. Everyone has to use the same bath water and then we use it to water the garden. There's a certain amount of physical stress related to the way we live. We live tired but we love it," Houser says.

A petite woman with a strong will, Houser says she knew as a teenager that she wanted to be a nurse and that she would use her skills to help people in the mission field. After graduating from UD, her first assignment was in Ethiopia, where she met her husband.

"I worked [as a nurse] in a famine relief station, and Mike worked nearby. We had very similar beliefs. We both wanted to use our skills to make a difference. Mike's thinking has always been that it's one thing to be able to save a family pet–pets are important–but it's another to be able to save an ox that a man depends on to plow the fields and feed his family."

Because of the stresses of their day-to-day lives, missionaries are put on furlough back in the United States every four years. During that six- to 12-month time, they typically live in housing provided by a church and travel to various congregations speaking about their lives and work.

During their furlough in 1989, the Housers were married. For a while, they lived in Texas, where their two oldest daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, were born. In January 1993, they went to West Africa, where Deborah and Ruth were born in mission hospitals.

Home schooling the four girls takes most of Jenny Houser's time these days, and the couple does most of its missionary work through the relationships they form in their community.

The girls think of Africa as home, Houser says, and don't feel deprived. They are each other's best friends and interact with other MKs--church lingo for Missionary Kids--whose parents work in nearby towns.

While Houser would like them to have playmates among the native people, cultural traditions prohibit little girls from having much free time. While it is not unusual to see little boys outside kicking balls and having fun, girls are put to work helping their mothers almost from the time they can toddle. They start out carrying babies for their mothers and gathering wood, Houser says.

The Houser girls raise bush chickens–animals that are too tough to eat, but provide the family with eggs.

"It's always a contest to see who can come up with the most outrageous chicken name," Houser says. "Some of our favorites have been King George IV and Princess Leia. I guess the names coincide with whatever we're studying at school or what video we're watching.

"The girls enjoy America. They like to go to Wal-Mart and look at the Barbies, but they also like to go back home."

While on their current furlough in Augusta, Maine, the couple will be busy buying and crating up supplies for the next four years–including birthday and Christmas presents. Their sponsoring mission board will store the crates and ship them as needed.

"For us, this is the perfect life," Houser says. "We're always home in the evenings. Every night we have family time, and we read to the girls every night. What defines us as a family is the time we spend together. We wouldn't trade that for anything.

"Our girls are healthy; they don't have a junk food diet; their parents are in love; they have an emotionally secure environment; they are getting a good education; and they don't watch television.

"They are TCKs [Third-World Culture Kids], but the world is becoming so small that being raised in another culture isn't that unusual any more."

When the girls are teenagers, Houser says, they will have the option of continuing home schooling or going to a nearby boarding school. She and her husband anticipate all of them returning to the States to go to college.

As for Jenny and Mike, they plan on staying in West Africa "until the cloud moves," an Old Testament reference to the Israelites following a cloud sent by God during the exodus from Egypt.

--Beth Thomas