The San Francisco Story
With Bud Heyde
KNBR (680 AM and 99.7 FM)
San Francisco
Circa 1968-1969
One of the most endearing, and enduring, programs on Bay Area radio was “The San Francisco Story,” presented for many years by Bud Heyde on KNBR (680 AM and 99.7 FM).
The 25-minute vignettes on the lesser-known moments in the city’s history, and portraits of the people who helped create that history, were broadcast on Sunday mornings, generally from 9:05 (after the NBC Monitor news at the top of the hour) until 9:30 a.m.
To the accompaniment of stirring music, Bud Heyde (who was often billed as Budd Heyde) delivered the stories in his best dramatic style. Many of the stories were drawn from Samuel Dickson‘s “Tales Of San Francisco,” a compendium of his three earlier works, “San Francisco Is Your Home,” “San Francisco Kaleidoscope” and “The Streets of San Francisco.”
Heyde, as narrator, and Dickson, as writer, had worked together on “This Is Your Home,” the predecessor to “The San Francisco Story,” which began airing on KNBC – the predecessor to KNBR – in the late 1940s.
According to an article about “This Is Your Home” in the January 1954 edition of NBC Chimes – the network’s in-house magazine – “So widespread has been public interest in the series that it has been the basis for two published collections of the tales by Dickson.”
“The San Francisco Story” on KNBR at this time was sponsored by Jenkel-Davidson Optical Company.
The recordings heard here were part of a series of 27 reel-to-reel tapes of the program, spanning the years 1968 and 1969, contributed by Don Husing of KSCO Radio (1080 AM) in Santa Cruz. Mr. Husing recorded the programs over the air from KNBR onto reel-to-reel tape at his home near Santa Cruz, about forty miles straight-line distance over the hills from the station’s Belmont transmitter.
The tapes vary in quality from near-perfect to fair, and some of the recordings include extended excerpts of the preceding NBC newscast and the “Voice of Prophecy” broadcast that followed.
Bud Heyde was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2010.
The San Francisco Story
with Bud Heyde
San Francisco Story – Leonard Kip (April 7, 1968):
San Francisco Story – Jane Lathrop Stanford (May 12, 1968):
San Francisco Story – New York Volunteers (May 19, 1968):
San Francisco Story – Ernestine Schumann Heink (June 9, 1968):
San Francisco Story – James Bidwell (June 16, 1968):
San Francisco Story – Mechanics’ Institute Library (June 23, 1968):
San Francisco Story – John C. Fremont (Part 1*; June 30, 1968):
San Francisco Story – John C. Fremont (Part 2; July 7, 1968):
San Francisco Story – John C. Fremont (Part 3; July 14, 1968):
San Francisco Story – David O’Brien (July 28, 1968):
San Francisco Story – The Rose of Sharon (August 4, 1968):
San Francisco Story – John McLaren (August 11, 1968):
San Francisco Story – Asians (August 18, 1968):
San Francisco Story – Gold, Guns and Ghost Towns (August 25, 1968):
San Francisco Story – St. Mary’s Square (September 8, 1968):
San Francisco Story – Emperor Norton (February 16, 1969):
* – Partial recording only.
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