Extracted from The Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Thursday, March 9, 2000

WILFORD M. NICHOLSON, RETIRED FCC ENGINEER

Wilford M. Nicholson, a Federal Communications Commission electronics engineer for more than three decades before he retired, died Sunday. He was 83.

Prior to embarking on a life's career with the FCC, Nicholson, just out of college in the late 1930s, worked as a radio communications engineer with the Civil Aeronautics Authority in Beaufort, S.C., and later as an engineer and announcer at radio station WAYX in Waycross, Ga., said his wife, Doris Nicholson of Fort Lauderdale.

He also copied news reports via Morse code.

Nicholson married Doris Miller on Dec. 12, 1939, in Waycross. “I came from New Orleans to Waycross to marry him,” she said. His next job took him to Savannah, Ga., where he was a radio operator on a dredging boat for six months, his wife said.

In 1940, Nicholson went to work as an FCC radio engineer with the Radio Intelligence Division in Marietta, Ga.

Later that year he was transferred to Dade County, where he worked out of the post office building in downtown Miami, monitoring spy stations, unlicensed radio stations and other “un-American activities,” Doris Nicholson said.

In 1949 the U.S. government bought property from WGBS radio near Pine Island Road and State Road 84 in Broward and built an intelligence monitoring station where Nicholson worked as an engineer and operated a mobile monitoring vehicle used for keeping tabs on short-range stations.

He was responsible for making sure such stations were properly licensed.

Nicholson retired in 1971.

“He was a fine fellow to work with and very competent engineer,” said his former boss, Homer Thompson of Winter Haven, Fla.

During his retirement years, Nicholson and his wife traveled extensively around the country and the world. Her husband, said Doris Nicholson, was a private person who was “a curious, very intelligent, well-read man [who] loved to travel.”

Nicholson was born on March 24, 1916, in Union, Miss., and was a graduate of Union High School there. As a means of supporting himself, Nicholson worked his way through college as a radio announcer at the Port Arthur College radio station in Port Arthur, Texas.

He earned a bachelor's degree in radio communications from the school in 1938.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Dale Nicholson; a grandson, Scott Nicholson, of Atlanta; a step-grandson, Mark Heath; a granddaughter, Julie Nicholson of Tampa; and a brother, Malone Nicholson of Madison, Miss.

A private funeral service will be held.

Arrangements are being handled by the Fairchild Funeral Home in Fort Lauderdale.