Editor's Note: The WPGU reunion, held in Champaign in April in honor of the student-run radio station's 50 years of existence, lured Chicago radio news veterna Charlie Meyerson '77 COM, MS '78 COM, back to campus for the first time since 1987.

The reunion plan was born on a WPGU alumni e-mail list in November, when Dane Placko '84, now a reporter for Chicago's WFLD-TV Ch. 32, made this tongue-in-cheek suggestion: "Let all the alums come back some weekend and run the station. ... Call the FCC in advance and get a waiver for any on-air violations. No post-1986 music allowed."

The idea spread with the speed of the Internet, gathering support from other alumni and officials of Illini Media Co., parent of WPGU, The Daily Illini, the Illio and the Technograph, and a date was set: Saturday, April 3.

But less than a month before the date, I found myself the only early-'70s alum on board. I hadn't spun records regularly on the radio for 27 years, and I despaired I'd have to fill two hours by myself.

Then a brief mention of the reunion in Robert Feder's Sun-Times radio-TV column brought a few of my contemporaries out of the woodwork. A visit to the University of Illinois Alumni Association's Online Directory [https://www.uiaaconnect.org/UIAA/SSOServlet?toPage=directory] let me e-mail a few more, and, as the big day approached, '70s-era brainstorming via the Internet became feverish. ...

FRIDAY MORNING, APRIL 2. A quick stop at my old dorm, Allen Hall. Construction all around, including a new student athletic center rising across the street, gives the neighborhood an unfamiliar feel. But some things never change: As I absently place my hand on a doorknob, I realize someone has slimed it with petroleum jelly.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON. I drive to WPGU's studios, long since relocated from the dank basement of Weston Hall to a nondescript storefront in a strip mall along Green Street west of Campustown. There, I link up with the alums most involved in planning "That '70s Segment" — former DJ Tom Thomas '76 BUS and former newscasters Jerry Role '79 LAS and Lynne Stiefel '77 COM. Old bonds are renewed quickly.

Tom, whose e-mails have displayed an encyclopedic memory of the C-U music scene in the '70s and relieved my airshift anxiety, greets me warmly. You'd never know this friendly man, now vice president of a geographic information services company in Texas, once followed my show pointedly with Loudon Wainwright III's "Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)."

Recalling my longtime passion for recycling, Jerry, now a U.S. Justice Department trial attorney in Washington, asks jokingly whether I compose my e-mail on the back of old UPI wire copy.

And Lynne, a reporter for the rival Hollinger newspaper empire, argues fiercely with me, as only old friends can, about the pros and cons of working for a company that encourages journalists to report across multiple media — print, broadcast, Internet. (I'm pro, she's con.)

Each of us is armed with stacks of music once billed on WPGU as "progressive rock" — songs now more likely to be found in record stores' "oldies" bins: The Who, Yes, Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane. ...

In 2004, the station's array of networked-computer/touchscreen-controlled/hard-drive-storage audio equipment makes the turntable/reel/cassette technology of the '70s seem as dated as chisels and rocks.

But with the same gung-ho spirit I remember from decades ago, when students would produce wall-to-wall coverage of election returns and dance marathons, WPGU's present-day staff has resurrected that ancient equipment to help us conjure up the ghosts of radio formats past. The work lasts well into the night.

1976 Illio Photo.