(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Welcome to the WKAR auction underwritten... - The auction gave the community a sense of belonging as members of WKAR.

- In 1978, there was no Home Shopping Network.

There was no eBay; there was no internet.

Auction was a unique way to bring items to folks.

- It was active, it was moving.

- It was complete chaos.

There was horns going off.

- We have an overbid.

- We do?

Yay.

(trumpet fanfare) - There's people running everywhere; they're shouting that come from other production jobs.

The last thing they yell is "quiet on the set!"

That was not auction at all.

- I was involved in starting up the auction at Dem Hall.

And Dem Hall was a whole other world from what it evolved to here in the studio.

And it was just this huge barn.

- Dem Hall would flood; the floors were warped.

They were building light structures for lighting.

They had to bring in everything.

You can see in the wide shots how much the cameras are zipping around the floor to get from one board to the other.

And I can't imagine how hard that would've been at Dem Hall.

Auction could not be done without the help of the students.

They're running our cameras.

They're helping shuttle items in and out of the studio.

And the intensity of it was hard to emulate.

After nine days of auction, it was essentially a year at any other job.

- The volunteers loved it because they were a part of something.

There were so many groups that wanted to say "I worked on the auction."

By the time I finished, we were using 2,500 volunteers each year.

Donors loved it because they got their five minutes in the sun.

- People would often say this to me: "Gosh, I won that item."

- We had a variety of things that you could purchase on the auction from oil changes to pontoon boats.

- They were saving real money, especially on big ticket items.

You know, that was part of the fun and the excitement.

But they also wanted to support their public broadcasting station.

- It just became an event for the community.