Background
Earl Ernest May was born on the 21st of March in 1890 near Hayes Center, Nebraska, and raised on a ranch his parents had homesteaded.
radio broadcaster nurseryman seedman
Earl Ernest May was born on the 21st of March in 1890 near Hayes Center, Nebraska, and raised on a ranch his parents had homesteaded.
Earl May received a degree from Fremont Normal College and served briefly as principal of the high school in his hometown. In 1911 he enrolled at the University of Michigan Law School, working in the summers as a door-to-door salesman for the D. M. Ferry Seed Company. Upon the death of his father, Earl May left the University of Michigan and returned to Hayes Center to be close to his family. He continued his education at the University of Nebraska, earning a law degree in 1915.
After the graduation of the Hayes Center high school in 1906, Earl May taught a rural school near Wauneta, Nebraska. While studying at the University of Michigan Law School, he was working in the summers as a door-to-door salesman for the D.M. Ferry Seed Company.
After the marriage, Earl May joined his father-in-law’s firm. Three years later, with advice and financial backing from Welch, May founded the Earl May Seed and Nursery Company. It struggled through its initial years, relying heavily on mail-order catalogs to generate sales. In addition to seeds, the company also marketed radios, clothing, automobile tires, house paint, and many household items.
In 1923 the Woodmen of the World, a life insurance company in Omaha, established radio station WOAW, one of the first broadcasting facilities in the Midwest. The following year, May Seed and Nursery Company performers traveled the 60 miles to Omaha from Shenandoah to present their first entertainment program over WOAW. Earl May offered free iris roots to the first 10,000 listeners to send him a postcard. Thousands responded.
In 1925 Earl May built the radio station KMA, "The Cornbelt Station in the Heart of the Nation." To fill airtime, he aired farm and market reports, discussed the weather, and gave gardening advice. When atmospheric conditions were right, KMA’s broadcasts could be heard in all 48 states. A postcard arrived informing Earl May that the KMA signal had been picked up by radio operators in Melbourne, Australia. In 1925 the readers of Radio Digest magazine voted Field, May's rival, the "World’s Most Popular Radio Broadcaster." In 1926 he withdrew his nomination and threw his support to Earl May, who won the award with 452,901 votes.
Both KMA and KFNF also began sponsoring autumn jubilees, inviting radio listeners to come to Shenandoah for free food and nonstop radio entertainment. An estimated 25,000 visitors made their way to the seed houses for the first jubilee, and in the year that followed the Earl May Seed and Nursery Company saw a fourfold increase in business.
Earl May constructed Mayfair, a $100,000 Moorish-themed radio auditorium with seating for 1,000 people to watch programs being produced on a soundproof stage and aired live. The broadcast auditoriums of KMA and KFNF and the expanding hours of operation of the radio stations brought many professional musicians to Shenandoah. Among the most popular programs was The KMA Country School, with Earl May in the role of a school principal presiding over an unruly cast of vaudeville performers.
The Earl May Seed and Nursery Company enjoyed healthy growth until 1930 when the effects of the Depression began to take hold. Earl May responded by opening branch stores across Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota to serve customers who did not have the financial means to make the trip to Shenandoah.
With financial assistance from E.S. Welch and the Mount Arbor Nurseries, the Earl May Seed and Nursery Company were able to weather the worst of the Depression. The firm continued to sponsor annual jubilees, with an estimated 100,000 people coming to Shenandoah for the events. In 1939 the May Broadcasting Company was incorporated and broken off from the May Seed and Nursery Company. Officers included Earl May, Gertrude May, and E. S. Welch.
Despite May's widespread name recognition and popularity, Earl May made only one foray into politics, serving for many years as president of the Shenandoah Park Commission.
In 1916 Earl Ernest May married Gertrude Frances Welch and they had two children.
Frances and Edward assumed the reins of the May Broadcasting Company and the Earl May Seed and Nursery Company.
Along with the Shenandoah Nurseries and the Henry Field Seed Company, Welch’s firm was establishing southwestern Iowa as an important area for the production and marketing of seeds, plants, and products for gardens and farms.
Earl May’s local competitor, Henry Field, launched radio station KFNF from his own Shenandoah Seedhouse in February 1924. Within a year of going on the air, Field’s company had doubled its sales, attributing much of the increase to the power of the new broadcast medium.
