By Nancy Fox

Radio legends, from left, Fred LaCosse, Los Altos Hills resident Dave Parker, Dan Odum, Bill Evenson and Duncan Robertson are scheduled to perform in a “Golden Memories of Radio” event Tuesday in San Francisco.

Well before the days of talk radio and shock jocks came the sound of hoofbeats and a cry of “Hi -Yo Silver” from the Lone Ranger.

The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society has scheduled “The Golden Memories of Radio,” a program that will re-create nostalgic examples of radio newscasts, daytime soap operas, commercials, jingles and prime-time bits, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Jewish Community Center, 3200 California St., San Francisco.

The program will include two retrospectives about the good old days as well as a live performance of historical radio programs – complete with sound effects – using original scripts.

Los Altos Hills resident Dave Parker, a member of the first “Lone Ranger” cast, will appear alongside other members of the Bay Area Broadcast Legends, including Terry Lowry, Fred LaCosse and Al Hart.

The event will revisit the medium’s heyday, when programming revolved around storylines, not news or music.

Parker remembered a “bald, Irish guy in his 70s who played Tonto. He had a bad habit of going to sleep during the show, leaning against the wall, until it was time for him to go on. The other actors had to be on alert to wake him up, when he’d go right to the mic and do his ‘Kemo Sabe.’”

He also recalled a court case in which someone claimed to have possession of the original horse, Silver.

“The lawyer for the Lone Ranger said to the judge, ‘He couldn’t have him, because I have the original Silver in this paper bag,’ at which point he pulled out two toilet plungers with short handles, declaring, ‘This is the original Silver!’”

In the late 1940s Parker acted in “The Lone Ranger,” “The Green Hornet” and “The Challenge of the Yukon.” He was subsequently radio dramatic director at WWJ in Detroit and director at KPIX, earned a doctorate at Northwestern University, taught at Wayne State, San Francisco State and Stanford University. He is currently a prolific writer, director and performer at The Family, a San Francisco men’s club.

Another of the Legends who will appear at the event, actor-singer-educator Dan Odum, has a 40-year history in radio. He fondly remembered producing – solo – the 30-minute “Proudly We Hail” series of stories about World War II.

The tales for each program were contained on two disks, each a quarter of an hour long. One day he put one on the radio turntable and hopped into his car to go “for a burger, planning to come back before the 15 minutes was up.

“At one point in the show there were soldiers getting out of a foxhole. The actor was saying, ‘Hey, Sarge, give me a hand, will ya’?’ But the record stuck, and I was on the road. When I heard it, I made a U-turn and raced back to the station. Three phones were ringing. I answered the one from the program director, who simply said, ‘Pappy, will you please get that man out of the foxhole?’”

The Legends, also known as “The Old Time Radio Players,” and the technical crew, some of whom worked on 1930s, 1940s and 1950s radio shows, will re-create radio segments that take the audience back to a time when “radio was king.”

Those scheduled to appear include Ken Ackerman, Bob Burrell, Bob Carson, Peter Cleaveland, Bill Evenson, Bruce Jenett, Bob Lazich, Joan Parker, Duncan Robertson, Bob Safford and Ed Vasgersian, along with crew members John Murray, Kim Connolly, Linda Odum and Suzanne Vasgersian.

Lowry and LaCosse co-hosted the popular “A.M. San Francisco” for years but “never did interviews together because we knew we would end up stepping on each other’s toes,” Lowry said.

Now, after 28 years of marriage, they don’t worry about potential missteps – they know how to move in sync.

Two speakers, Mike Adams and David Jackson, will explore radio history at the event.

In 1959 Adams built a radio station – in his bedroom. Its tiny signal traveled several miles. He was threatened by a local radio station engineer with the standard Federal Communications Commission fine of “$10,000 and 20 years in prison” for the high school science project.

Adams, who since has been a radio and TV broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, researcher, writer, producer, director, author, educator and performer, is chairman of the Department of Television, Radio, Film and Theatre at San Jose State University and chairman of the board of the California Historical Radio Society. His talk will focus on the book he co-authored, “Charles Herrold: Inventor of Radio Broadcasting” (McFarland & Co., 2003).

Jackson, founding curator of the Bay Area Radio Museum and director of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, has written hundreds of articles about the medium. He is a leading collector and appraiser of radio memorabilia in the United States. He will talk on “Radio: A Century of Sound and Fury.”

The event is free for members, $5 for nonmembers. A reception at 7 p.m. will precede the 7:30 program.

For more information, visit www.sfhistory.org or call (415) 777-1111, ext. 5.