Radio: Helen of Tulsa

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George Cameron, 40, struck it rich in Colorado's Rangely oilfield. After drilling 40 productive wells in a row, with an annual income of $600,000 pouring relentlessly on top of his previously oil-won millions, he settled down in Tulsa, Okla. But the new-found leisure bored him. "Oil just means more money," he complained, "I can't sleep with it. I have no sense of doing or accomplishing anything."

At that fortuitous moment, Cameron met lissome, brunette Helen Maria Alvarez, 27, who in seven years at Tulsa's radio station KTUL had progressed from secretary to radio-time saleswoman. He soon persuaded Helen Alvarez to quit her job and become president of a new Cameron project—Tulsa's first television station, KOTV.

Going promptly to work, pretty President Alvarez personally designed the studios (ceilings 22 ft. high, and doors wide enough to admit football floats or elephants). In three weeks she spurred admiring engineers to complete wiring that normally takes three months. Despite the competition of Oklahoma's Senator Robert S. Kerr and Tulsa's grand old man of oil and No. 1 citizen, W.G. Skelly (who had also applied for a TV station permit), she secured the tower of the National Bank of Tulsa for KOTV's transmitter. Wearing shorts, she clambered up 400 ft. on an outside ladder to inspect the tower installation. (During this ceremony, a startled workman dropped a wrench to the street below, killing a woman pedestrian from Sapulpa, Okla.)

Last week, gleaming with fuchsia and olive-green paint, station KOTV held its grand opening. Swarms of prominent Tulsans were disappointed when the Hollywood stars who had been announced failed to show up. But beauty was well represented by Tulsa-born Singer Patti Page, who arrived in a Cadillac, mink and diamonds; and by Helen Maria Alvarez herself who, though too busy to buy a new costume, looked more than satisfactory in a three-year-old lace dress.

In her office, President Alvarez sounded an optimistic note-for the future. Said she: "We have shows from all of the TV networks and a small staff (22). Maybe that way we can prove it needn't take years to get into the black." Standing by, Business Partner George Cameron said, grinning happily: "We can keep going if the oil wells keep pumping."