How do you welcome a new radio personality who’s moved from New York to Hawaii? Today it might be an ad campaign on radio and TV. But in 1959 the United States’ youngest program director had a different idea: Keep him awake for eight days in a department store window.
The new radio personality was 23-year-old Tom Rounds. The program director was Ron Jacobs. And the station was KPOI.
KPOI (AM 1380) was Hawaii’s first all-rock ‘n’ roll radio station when it switched to that format in May 1959, a few months before statehood.
Jacobs was a prankster. I wrote (on May 30, 2014) about two of his and Tom Moffatt’s stunts with roller derby at the Civic Auditorium and Elvis Presley.
Rounds had been a newsman at radio station WINS in New York. He was hired to do the same at KPOI, but Jacobs thought he should be one of the Poi Boys — the zany disc jockeys who played Top 40 around the clock.
"I’ll come up with a promotion to introduce you," Jacobs promised him.
Jacobs’ idea was to try to set a world record for staying awake for a little over eight days. The previous record was 201 hours, 10 minutes.
"No one had heard of the Guinness Book of World Records back then," Jacobs said. "My idea was to put Tom Rounds in a department store window for eight days. We called it a ‘Wake-a-thon.’"
The store he chose was Wigwam on Dillingham Boulevard across from the Oahu Community Correctional Center. I’m sure many of my readers remember Wigwam, which had eight stores in the islands at one time and 35 in Washington, California and Arizona.
The first Wigwam store in Hawaii opened in 1958 in Dillingham Plaza in Kalihi, where Savers is today. A wigwam is an American Indian dwelling, and the chain took that name because the first store in Seattle began in a tent. Pay Less Drug Stores bought out the Wigwam chain in 1971.
Jacobs put Rounds in the Wigwam barbershop from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. because it had a big window facing the street, and "people would drive up at all hours of the day and night to see a guy staying awake," Jacobs said.
KPOI would cut to him a couple times an hour to see how he was doing.
The PR stunt was so successful that it was on the front page of the paper for eight days, Jacobs recalled. It was bigger than any of the news stories.
"Rounds had a whole support team that would blow horns, whistle or yell to keep him up. We brought in celebrities and musicians. It was a circus."
The deejay developed a routine to stay awake. He walked up and down the store’s 600-foot aisles, stopped in the subzero meat freezer, played with toys in the toy shop and took cold showers.
After four days Rounds reported on air that he had not yet had a hallucination; however, he concluded by saying he was broadcasting from the Hawaiian Airlines terminal.
"I’ll never know what made me say it," Rounds said. "I knew it was wrong the moment it popped out."
After five days the papers reported Rounds was doing fine, but his rotating support crew was completely exhausted. A midnight visitor found Rounds playing basketball in the Wigwam parking lot while his support crew slept in the furniture department.
Everything went well until Rounds actually started hallucinating on night six, left the store and drove to Waikiki. "We found out and managed to get him back to the barbershop window without the press knowing about it," Jacobs said.
On this seventh day Rounds slugged Don Tyler, one of his support crew, and took off running down a Wigwam aisle. Rounds reported that he was "very foggy about what’s going on" but thought he would make it to the record.
A few hours later he stumbled away from his crew and cried that they were "insane" and that he couldn’t go on. Shortly thereafter he apologized. Jacobs said Rounds’ sheer determination was carrying him to the finish line.
At 3:15 p.m., 50 cheerleaders from Sacred Hearts Academy showed up. The girls led cheers of encouragement.
When the eighth day came — Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1959 — a crowd of 200 greeted Rounds and cheered as he left the store after 203 hours, 44 minutes and 40 seconds.
"I’m very happy I have set a Wake-a-thon record," he told the crowd. "Now I’m going to set another record — for sleeping!"
An ambulance took him to Saint Francis Hospital for a checkup — he was fine — but he stayed there two days. Rounds finally fell asleep but woke after just 15 minutes and said he wanted to read "a magazine article," which worried his wife. Moments later he nodded off and slept for 24 hours. It took about a week at home for him to recover.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin ran a quarter-page photo of Rounds on the front page. The headline said, "ROUNDS SLEEPS, HE’S A CHAMP."
"The Wake-a-thon inspired us to create more thons in the months to come," Jacobs said, "including a Bowl-a-thon, Cycle-a-thon, Insult-a-thons, Hang-a-thons and Drum-a-thon, etc."
Former Poi Boy Dave Donnelly, who would later star in the afternoon kid’s TV show "Checkers and Pogo" and then write for the Star-Bulletin, recalled that he and Rounds went head to head in the Insult-a-thon.
"Tom Rounds and I insulted each other nonstop for a great number of minutes. Callers would phone in when each of us was on the air and give us new insults we could add to our list.
"It was just a fun, silly thing that we did. It lasted one day and it was over. But you never knew what people were going to be doing next down there.
"A woman told me one time, ‘I always had my radio set to KPOI because if it isn’t, you’re afraid you might miss something.’"
Jacobs said the publicity stunt was a huge success. "Tom Rounds had just moved from New York to Hawaii, and we made him a celebrity in just two weeks. Then he settled into the 3 to 6 p.m. afternoon drive deejay slot.
Jacobs left KPOI and ended up at KHJ in Los Angeles. His work as program manager helped it become the top rock ‘n’ roll station in the country.
Rounds became a pioneer in music videos, making them for Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, Aretha Franklin, the Rascals, the Who and Ricky Nelson.
In 1970, Rounds and Jacobs helped found "American Top 40" with friend Casey Kasem. The three-hour show was syndicated to more than 500 radio stations in 70 countries, and is hosted by Ryan Seacrest today.
Jacobs lives in Pearl City today. Rounds died in 2014.
