Remembering Ralph Epperson, Founder of Bluegrass And Old-Time Music Station WPAQ by David Ford
4:23pm Apr 05, 2021 Ralph Epperson (left) and his son Kelly at WPAQ in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Kelly Epperson.
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This week would have marked the 100th birthday of Ralph Epperson, who was born on April 5, 1921. In the 1930s he left behind the tobacco fields near Mount Airy for college where he studied radio technology before returning to build that area’s first radio station, WPAQ, in 1948. It continues to bring live church services, bluegrass, and old-time music performances to the Piedmont and southern Virginia. Epperson’s son Kelly Epperson auditioned for a job at WPAQ in 1977 and has helped keep the tradition alive ever since. He spoke with WFDD’s David Ford.
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The greatest threat from terrorism in the United States comes from people who are associated with a British Church of England-run Pentecostalist movement inside the United States. It is this apparatus which has structured the militias. Now, most people in the militia movement, or associated with it, have no part of the intentions of those who are behind it, particularly that section in the Episcopal Church, or Pat Robertson, who’s part of this same movement, who are barking–authentically barking–Pentecostalists, who, with their connections with the military, deeply embedded in the military, including the … corps of chaplains in the U.S. military, are largely controlled, presently, by outright barking Pentecostalists …. This is the … main source of the internal threat of the potential for terrorism, and other kinds of treason inside the United States, today.“