Cecil Lowery Suitt (1908–2006)

Cecil Lowery Suitt was a musician and radio/television broadcasting pioneer known for playing in dance bands during Prohibition, serving as chief engineer of the KTHS radio station, and serving as chief engineer of Channel 11 KTHV Television.

Cecil Lowery Suitt was born to Clara Mae Lowery Suitt and John Wesley Suitt on December 27, 1908, in Des Arc (Prairie County) as his family was traveling for the holidays, but he and younger sister Hazel Marie were raised in the family home in Hot Springs (Garland County). In 1919, he began training with his neighbor, Roy Disheroon, a pioneer radio engineer and operator of amateur radio station 5JB. Disheroon had made radio contact with an amateur station in Paris, France. Suitt’s apprenticeship in Disheroon’s engineering shop lasted three years, until Disheroon died in 1922. During this time, Suitt taught himself to play an alto saxophone and a clarinet his father had passed down to him.

Suitt spent considerable time in 1923–1924 observing and taking notes with engineers during the construction of the new ten-kilowatt KTHS radio plant under the direction of R. J. Rockwell, chief engineer. In 1924, Suitt was a founding member and vice president of the first radio club at Hot Springs High School. (He opted to take the role of vice president instead of president to leave time to play in dance bands.) He had become known around the Hot Springs music scene. The grand opening of “new” Arlington Hotel was held on December 31, 1924, and the towers of the hotel housed KTHS Radio, the station that would broadcast radio live from the ballroom stage, where Suitt played in the band. Years later, the radio station would be operated and expanded to Little Rock (Pulaski County) by Suitt.

In 1926, Suitt graduated from Hot Springs High School. A self-taught musician on alto saxophone and two different types of clarinets, he played in bands for the next ten years in Hot Springs, El Dorado (Union County), Smackover (Union County), and Texarkana (Miller County). Most notably, he joined Vern Radley’s Majestic Hotel Band in Hot Springs in 1926. Cecil Suitt secretly married Euna Corrine Lowe, daughter of still-busting Sheriff Will Lowe, in 1928. Euna was known locally for her tales as the Long Distance Telephone Supervisor and later became a writer for the Arkansas Democrat. They had four children and divorced in 1950.

When WBAP, a Fort Worth, Texas, radio station, was ordered by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to share 600 KW with KTHS, it made joint transmissions possible. Suitt played in the Majestic Hotel Band featured on a joint live radio broadcast live from the Hot Springs High School auditorium, called “WBAP at Hot Springs High,” on March 18, 1926. Suitt had become versatile in classical, jazz, and swing music by this time, playing alto sax and clarinet for the Dick Wolever Orchestra, which regularly performed at the Belvedere Country Club, a prominent casino that opened in Hot Springs in 1930. They often played the Willow Room (on the site that later became the 1960s Vapors nightclub). Suitt also played with the New Arlington Meyer Davis Orchestra, which was part of a music society based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Suitt designed, built, and operated an amateur radio station in the new field of Federal Radio Commission (FRC) licensed radio, and he obtained W5AYH as his call sign in 1931. After enlisting in the U.S. Naval Communications Reserve in 1932, Suitt trained in naval communications, building and operating his own radio station in the Naval Network.

In 1934, Suitt joined the engineering staff of KTHS radio as a control operator and subsequently became transmitter engineer in 1936, full-time assistant chief engineer in 1938, and chief engineer in June 1942. Suitt continued to play in dance bands as his main source of income until he went full-time at KTHS.

In 1942, Suitt taught radio theory and Morse code classes for the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) training program during World War II. In 1944, he was a Hot Springs High School faculty member and taught introductory radio courses.

In addition to his engineering duties at KTHS, from 1947 to 1952, Suitt installed and maintained a Utility Mobile Radio System with remote-controlled transmitters, police two-way systems, and taxicab mobile systems. He also designed a power company two-way system in Hot Springs, Arkadelphia (Clark County), Malvern (Hot Spring County), and Gurdon (Clark County).

In 1952, Suitt was in charge of moving the radio station KTHS from Hot Springs to downtown Little Rock. He supervised the construction of the fifty-kilowatt transmitter and antenna in Wrightsville (Pulaski County), living on location throughout the project.

Suitt had studied television from the early crude mechanical systems of the 1920s era through the development of the 525-line monochrome television system. He educated himself in early television broadcasting development (late 1930s through color television in the 1960s) by reading various engineering journals, attending conferences, and studying through extension courses.

In addition to engineering management duties, Suitt supervised construction of the joint KTHS-KTHV radio-television studios on 8th and Izard streets and construction of a television transmitter on Shinall Mountain west of Little Rock. He also had an apartment on site there, where he oversaw construction. He navigated television engineering duties from the KTHV offices to the transmitter site on Shinall Mountain. He also supervised and trained audio engineers, video engineers, projectionists, and transmitter engineers. Suitt was chief engineer of both KTHS radio and KTHV television from 1955 to 1962. Suitt remained chief engineer of KTHV Channel 11 television until his retirement from that position in 1996, after which he continued to work at the Shinall Mountain television transmitter for many years. He continued to operate his amateur radio station W5AYH from Little Rock, retaining his operator license until his death.

Suitt died in Little Rock on June 29, 2006, and is buried at Memorial Gardens in Hot Springs. His daughter Dr. Jane Suitt Cater became a radio/TV/film professor at University of the Ozarks in Clarksville (Johnson County), and his grandson, Donavan W. Suitt, became a musician, producer, and broadcaster in Little Rock.

For additional information:
Obituary for Cecil Lowery Suitt. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 1, 2006, p. 6B.

Poindexter, Ray. Arkansas Airwaves. North Little Rock, AR: 1974.

Donavan Suitt
Little Rock, Arkansas