Chronology: Ken Engle on the Air

Chronology, continued

A Radio on the Farm

Ken Engle's radio ministry began with a radio on a Kansas farm. As a boy he listened to the programs of Moody Bible Institute. In high school he won an award for a speech with the FFA, the Future Farmers of America, and an FFA trip took him to Chicago, where he saw Moody for himself. He enrolled.

After the war he went back to Moody and became an announcer on WMBI, the Institute's station. Once he introduced the salon orchestra as the "saloon orchestra." He blamed being "too long in the Air Force."

In the summer of 1950 he sent his sister Eloise his radio schedule, with news:

Surprise of surprises – I'm going to be doing the Morning Clock (Bob Murfins job) 4 morning in July (4,8,11,15). Pray for me.

Ken to Eloise, 29 June 1950

A fourteen-year-old listener, he added, had written in to say she had a mental picture that Bob Murfin looked like Ken Engle.

"Morning Clock" was the program that woke Chicago up. Two weeks later Ken wrote to Mary Lou Leonard, a student nurse he had just begun to date:

I have no idea how many faithful listeners I have lost the station by now. Even if no one else enjoys it I can say I'm having the time of my life.

Ken to Mary Lou, 13 July 1950

"So far I've received two requests from people for poems read on the air."

From Ken's letters and Kevin's memories.

You Broke Me In

At WMBI Ken also trained the new men. One of them was Bill Pearce, a Marine Corps trombonist home from the war, who came to Moody and was hired at the station. Ken taught him the control console. Bill worked closely there with Chuck Christensen.

Bill never forgot who taught him. In later years, whenever he saw Ken, he said the same thing:

You broke me in.

Bill Pearce to Ken, as Kevin remembers it

Bill went on to a long radio life of his own. At WMBI in the 1960s he hosted a late-night program, and in the 1970s he founded Nightsounds, music and a quiet word for the night, heard each weeknight on more than 300 stations in the United States, Canada and overseas. In 1992 he was inducted into the National Religious Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Listen to Nightsounds at nightsoundsradio.org.

As Kevin remembers it (8 Oct 2026), with the Nightsounds station histories.

Helen Barth

Of all the voices at WMBI, the one Ken was happiest to work with was Helen Barth. The family remembers her as the nightclub singer who came to sing for the Lord, and Dad was always glad to tell it.

She grew up as Helen McAlerney in Moline, Illinois. As a young woman she sang with a dance orchestra and had a show on a station across the river in Davenport, Iowa, and she was headed for the nightclub circuit. She was not happy. In 1939 she enrolled at Moody Bible Institute, and during her first days there she came to faith in Christ.

WMBI turned her down twice. On her third audition she was hired. By 1942 she was on the staff full time, singing her own live programs every week, often alongside George Beverly Shea. In 1943 the bandleader Tommy Dorsey asked her to join his band, and she said no. The next year she married Reinhold Barth, and from 1950 they served with Youth for Christ in Germany, where she sang at Billy Graham's meetings in London and Berlin.

Ken never forgot sharing the air with her. Sailing to the Philippines in March 1951, he tuned in to DZAS from the ship and wrote Mary Lou the news:

Heard Helen Borth the other day.

Ken to Mary Lou, 14 March 1951

Halfway around the world, her voice had gotten there first.

From family memory, Ken's letter of 14 March 1951, and Moody Bible Institute's 2017 alumni tribute.

The Little Room

That August Mary Lou toured the Moody station with friends and wrote to Ken, who was home on the farm in Kansas:

Saw the little room from which "Morning Clock" eminates. Could just picture you there trying not to fall asleep and trying to wake others up.

Mary Lou to Ken, August 1950

Ken was glad of the break. Plowing on the farm, he wrote, was "about the best vacation I could have because it's so restful after radio and school work." Before he left Chicago he hooked up a little record player to his Hallicrafters short-wave set, "ready to take to the Philippines."

In Chicago Mary Lou kept listening. In December she heard him again:

This pm at 3:15 heard you over WMBI … You quoted the verse "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace" ect.

Mary Lou to Ken, December 1950

That same month an old friend, Clyde Dennis, wrote to Ken that he had heard his voice on WMBI "and hoped I'd be broadcasting in the Far East soon."

From Ken and Mary Lou's letters, 1950.

Religious Radio Broadcasting

That fall Ken spoke his way through New England and New York with his slides of the Philippines, and some of the talks went out over the air. "It has to be written out for the radio," he wrote of one, "and I've spent hours on it already."

His visa for the Philippines was still in doubt. In November a note came from Cyril Brooks in Manila. The immigration investigator had recommended the visa, and Mr. Brooks explained what had helped:

I stressed particularly the fact that you had specialized in religious radio broadcasting. You see we have to demonstrate that there is no one locally to be had for the work you are coming to do.

Cyril Brooks, quoted by Ken, November 1950

Ken passed it on to Mary Lou the same day.

You know how I love radio work, darling – well it looks as though over there I'll get to do it. The Lord has all these things planned.

Ken to Mary Lou, November 1950

He told her to find the new Christian Life, which had "a wonderful article about DZAS," the gospel station in Manila. And he let himself dream: "I can just see M.L. at the DZAS studio organ. It will be the sweetest music those Filipinos have heard."

From Ken's letters to Mary Lou, November 1950.

Listening from the Ship

Ken sailed from San Francisco on 18 February 1951 on the freighter California Bear. Somewhere on the Pacific his receiver began to pick up DZAS, and he heard his own name.

Say I heard Mr. Brooks twice while on the ship. On Monday night he said something like this – "Next week we'll have a guest Mr. Kenneth Engle now on the California Bear – " (Thrill)

Ken to Mary Lou, 14 March 1951

"Sounds so much like WMBI," he wrote. In Manila Bay the next evening he listened to the six o'clock news from DZAS: "The quality of the programs I find is very high."

Back in Chicago, Mary Lou listened to WMBI and thought of him.

Saturday Songsters were just on the air. My, but I do enjoy it. If the Philipines enjoy D. ZAS a fraction as much as we do WMBI, it must be a real blessing.

Mary Lou to Ken, 17 March 1951

At a young people's meeting she watched a film about HCJB, the missionary station in Ecuador. "I was picturing you in the studio of DZAS," she wrote, "as I actually viewed the type of work done by missionary radio."

From Ken and Mary Lou's letters, March 1951.

The Bible School of the Air

Ken landed in Manila on Saturday 17 March 1951. On Monday he was opening and grading letters for Mr. Brooks's Bible School of the Air, which had "well over 2000 enrolled," and that evening Mr. Brooks interviewed him on DZAS. Within the week Mr. Brooks let him do the announcing.

In the evening out to DZAS. I now do the announcing for the program. … They are all so thrilled the way the school is going over. We get more letters than any other program. May all the glory go to Him.

Ken to Mary Lou, 26 March 1951

He wrote the scripts and mimeographed the lessons. The program aired on Monday nights and again on Sunday, so "we are really on three times a week." Hearing himself on tape, he admitted, "I sounded kinda scared-maybe I'll get over that." One week brought more than a hundred new enrollments, "the biggest week yet," and a letter from a listener who had been saved. On visitation he met a young man in the tuberculosis hospital who had been "reached by the radio work."

Mary Lou answered from Chicago: "I can just hear you announcing! (Those fortunate people getting to hear my Ken)."

Two months later the station returned the favor. When word came that Mary Lou had said yes to his proposal, someone at DZAS dedicated a song on the air: "So Kenny this is for you."

From Ken and Mary Lou's letters, March–May 1951.

A Thousand Programs

Ken served on the air with the Far East Broadcasting Company in Manila from 1951. Over the years he made more than a thousand radio programs. In the spring of 1966 he and Dad Brooks recorded thirty-six programs on Romans, one chapter after another. For his many Roman Catholic listeners he often read from the Knox translation.

By June 1967 the Bible School of the Air had passed the millionth mark in students enrolled. When the family moved to Baguio that summer, Ken wrote to the elders back home that he would keep taping programs for it and for his own program, "Living Letters."

A gift for radio work had just come in, and he asked whether it was the first "green light" toward Baguio radio work. The letter is in Volume Three, "Dear Brethren."

In August he went calling on the radio stations of Baguio. By the ninth, DZBS had given him a contract.

From Ken's letter to the Woodside elders, 3 June 1967.

Be Not Afraid

On Saturday, 2 September 1967, the first Children's Bible Hour went out over DZBS in Baguio, with sixty seconds at the end to give the address. Ken's diary page for that day, with its verse from Matthew 14, is told in full in Volume Three, "Be Not Afraid."

That same year, his diary shows, he began the program the family remembers best: Moments of Melody, hymns and gospel music with a short message in his own quiet voice.

From Ken's 1967 diary and Gordon's story "Be Not Afraid" (7 Oct 2026).

Moments of Melody

Years later a missionary named Jack Baker, who had also worked in radio at DZAS, visited the family in Canada. Becky wrote to Kevin afterward that Jack "told Daddy how much he appreciated Dad's programs, Moments of Melody." What Jack remembered, she said, was Ken's "calm and loving ways, and gentle voice."

When the family came home to Abilene from 1970 to 1973, the program came too. Ken was heard on Kansas stations KABI, KSKG and KLJC. Mary Lou's diary for 22 September 1971:

Ken & I went to Salina. KSKG wants to use m.m. every day.

Mary Lou, 22 September 1971

Ten days later they drove back to Salina "to take tapes to KSKG." In 1973 the family returned to Baguio, and the programs went on until they left the field in 1975.

From Becky's email to Kevin and Mary Lou's 1971 diary.

From Abilene

Today 1,046 of the messages Ken recorded from Abilene are kept on Voices for Christ.

His children teased him that Dad "only knows how to play the radio." In 2008, staying with Becky in Ontario, he listened to the old record albums of Radio Bible Class and the Sixteen Singing Men. Becky wrote that the music "unlocks the part of his brain which remembers so much detail about the men involved in this music and Moody."

From family emails, 2008.

Sky Angel

In May 2004, after some twenty years off the air, Moments of Melody came back. Kevin produced it. Audio engineers at Children's Bible Hour in Grand Rapids, Michigan, remastered the programs, taking the music off and putting it back in from new digital copies of the original records. Ted Sealy recorded an introduction and closing. Kevin had enough programs for more than seven years of weekly broadcasts.

The Bible Broadcasting Network carried it on 265 stations in the United States and South America, by way of the Sky Angel satellite. The signal did not reach Abilene, so Ken, seventy-nine, drove toward Salina to hear the first broadcast on AM radio.

Three days later the network cancelled it. Nobody knows exactly why. Ken wrote four words in his daily log:

Sky Angel Shot Down.

Ken, 4 May 2004

As Kevin remembers it, with Ken's daily log for May 2004.

On the Air Again

On 7 July 2026, Kevin wrote to the family: "keepm.org Radio is LIVE — Dad's STATION just started."

keepm.org is a 24-hour gospel radio station. It plays Ken Engle's messages around the clock, along with Bible teaching from men like Tommy Nelson and Ray Stedman. It is part of KEE Philippine Missions, which carries on Ken's passion for the islands. Through the Messenger 60 Project, Filipino listeners who memorize sixty Bible verses receive a solar audio Bible of their own.

A farm boy listened to Moody radio in Kansas. Eighty years later his own voice is on the air again, day and night, for the Philippines he loved.

Keep them for Jesus for eternity.

the prayer behind KEE Philippine Missions

From Kevin's email to the family, 7 July 2026.

Sources

Drawn from: Ken and Mary Lou's letters of 1950–51 (Engle Letters, 2007 transcription project); Ken's diaries and his letter of 3 June 1967 to the Woodside Bible Chapel elders; Mary Lou's 1971 diary; Gordon's stories "The Letter She Lost," "Give Us This Mountain" and "Be Not Afraid"; family emails 2008–2026 from Becky, Kevin, Gordon and Doug; Kevin's recollections (8 Oct 2026: the FFA speech award, WMBI 1946–50, training Bill Pearce, and the later program names); on Bill Pearce and Nightsounds, KARI 550 and WORD-FM station pages; on Helen Barth, Moody Bible Institute's 2017 alumni tribute; Ken's 1973 testimony tape.

More to come. Kevin is gathering more of Dad's radio material, and this volume will grow.