WHRW - Moe Loogham

Moe Loogham

In the early 1970s, a strange graffito started to appear on campus. A picture in the 1973 yearbook shows "Moe Loogham Is Coming!" spray-painted on the plywood walls surrounding the School of Engineering building construction site at Binghamton University, which was then known as Harpur College. From the mid 1970s onward, Moe Loogham was referred to frequently on WHRW's programs, in station publications, and all around campus. In fact, Moe's name has been seen in such diverse locations as at the top of the Washington Monument and in downtown Prague.

Moe appears to be an enigmatic folk legend whose name is derived from the name of a social club at a Hicksville, Long Island high school. (Moe's last name is believed to be a re-working of the name of the Rolling Stones' record producer, Andrew Loog Oldham). First word of Moe came to the third floor of the dormitory Delaware Hall on September 10, 1970. He was thought of more as the "Bringer of all Rightness" than anything else. In ensuing months, "Men (and Women) of Moe" would engage in "slapping missions" where simply-printed stickers with the words "Moe Loogham is Coming!" printed on them in plain block letters would be pasted in prominent locations on and off campus (like Lecture Hall-1, a popular meeting place for classes and student organizations on the Binghamton University campus).

"Moe" was said by some to be a drug dealer (which in those days meant a counterculture figure who functioned more like a neighborhood grocer or bartender than a criminal nuisance) or a shipment of drugs (which in those days usually meant marijuana ("Moe's Loogs"...), hashish or the odd tablet or sugar-cube of LSD). According to legend, he was supposed to have "so many drugs that no one would ever need to get drugs from anyone else again," and "drugs of many kinds and colors, drugs beyond one's wildest dreams." In later years, Moe was the nostalgic icon for the euphoria of the 1960s. But regardless of the times, the popular saying on campus was that "When Moe gets here, everything will be All Right!"

In more recent years as new generations have called WHRW their own, Moe has become sort of a godhead to long-standing station members, a metaphor for the free spirit of WHRW. Moe's name is now often used as a way to describe the euphoria often felt when good radio happens just right.

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