Lin Folk, a former WPLN contributor who recently joined the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame, died last week at 101.
Before her radio career, Elinor Folk was one of the first women to enlist in the Navy during World War II. She then became a children’s storyteller at the Nashville Public Library, where she got involved with the new radio service it launched in 1962, called WPLN. (WPLN’s call letters stand for Public Library Nashville.)
“I was on air the very first day,” she remembers in
a video produced by the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame. “We only broadcast three hours a day, and that particular day I broadcast a little story for children.”
Later, at the urging of her station manager, Folk started doing interviews, like this one in 1975, talking to Sarah Cannon about her iconic role as Minnie Pearl.
When the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame inducted Folk last year,
they noted that she had produced hundreds of 5-minute “vignettes” about the state for a WPLN series called Tennessee Kaleidescope.
Folk passed away peacefully and will be buried with military honors, according to
her obituary.
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