Alden Petersen Aaroe (5 May 1918–7 July 1993), radio broadcaster, was born in Washington, D.C., the only child of George Aaroe, an army officer, and Anna Petersen Aaroe, a teacher. When he was very young his parents separated, and he went to live with his maternal grandparents in Oxford, Warren County, New Jersey. His mother, who taught school in Summit, a New Jersey suburb of New York City, traveled to Oxford on weekends to be with her son. At six years of age Aaroe went to live with his mother and was enrolled in the public schools. As he grew up he often returned to his grandparents' farm on weekends and during summers.
In 1936 Aaroe entered the University of Virginia, where he majored in economics and minored in dramatics but did not graduate. During his fourth year he worked as a part-time announcer for Charlottesville radio station WCHV, and after he left school he became its full-time program director. On 5 February 1942 he married Edna Louise Kirby, and they had one daughter. Three days before his wedding he enlisted in the aviation cadet program of the United States Army Air Corps and in January 1943 was commissioned a second lieutenant. While stationed at U.S. bases in Cairo, Egypt, and Tehran, Iran, he logged more than two thousand hours as a pilot of transport planes. At the end of the war he held the rank of captain.
On 1 February 1946 Aaroe joined the staff of radio station WRVA in Richmond, where he worked for the remainder of his career. His early assignments included serving as master of ceremonies for the station's popular Saturday night music program, the Old Dominion Barn Dance, and broadcasting a downtown morning segment called The Street Man, sponsored by the Strietmann Biscuit Company, in which he conducted on-the-street interviews and passed out orchids. In 1956 he launched the Alden Aaroe Morning Program. His informal, conversational style soon attracted a large audience, and the show became one of the longest-running radio programs of its kind in the country. Because the station broadcast with a very powerful signal, Aaroe's program gained a loyal following throughout much of central and eastern Virginia and in parts of North Carolina and West Virginia as well. In 1967 he became program director of WRVA, and the following year he was named the station's vice president.
For thirty-seven years Aaroe's morning show was the centerpiece of WRVA's programming, and trade magazines ranked him as one of the most popular morning-show announcers in the business. His enduring appeal derived from a relaxed and personal broadcast style and his deep, well-modulated voice. He mixed informal, neighborly discussions of gardening and fishing with news, weather, and agricultural reports, reaching across social and demographic boundaries. For many years he sprinkled his commentary with anecdotes about suburban life at his Henrico County house, located on what he called "Mad Mountain." Aaroe gave time on the air and in person to a number of service organizations and received numerous honors, including election to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame in 1989 and an honorary doctor of humanities degree from the University of Richmond in 1990.
In November 1985 Tim Timberlake joined Aaroe's popular morning show in order to take some of the burden of a one-man show off of the sixty-seven-year-old broadcaster and thereby extend Aaroe's career. In 1986 the station staged an anniversary commemoration of Aaroe's forty years with WRVA, and on his seventy-fifth birthday in May 1993 the station's Shoe Fund for the Salvation Army was named in his honor. Aaroe had been a founder of the fund, which during its annual Christmas campaigns had raised more than $3.5 million to provide shoes for needy children.
After his first marriage ended in divorce, Aaroe married Frances Perry on 29 August 1975 and moved to Hanover County. He underwent surgery for lung cancer in the winter of 1992, but it recurred in the spring of 1993, and on 23 June he announced his retirement from broadcasting. Alden Petersen Aaroe died at his residence in Hanover County on 7 July 1993 and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
Sources Consulted:
Steve Clark, Alden Aaroe: Voice of the Morning (1994); family information verified by Frances Perry Aaroe and daughter, Anna Louise Aaroe Schaberg; obituary file, WRVA News, Richmond; biography files, Richmond Public Library; feature articles in Richmond Magazine, Nov. 1974, 26–28, 52, and Richmond Style Weekly, 25 Feb. 1986, 22–25; obituary in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8 July 1993 (portrait).
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Donald W. Gunter.
How to cite this page:
Donald W. Gunter, "Alden Petersen Aaroe (1918–1993)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 1998 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Aaroe_Alden, accessed [today's date]).
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