The Matchcover Storyteller

I put this matchcover with my radio stations for KHQ Radio in Spokane, Washington, but it could as easily go with Hotels, or Washington (or Spokane, for that matter if you’re from there) and maybe more obscurely with personalities in some way,

The largest name on this older 20-strike front striker from Ohio Match is the name “Vic Dessert”.  Victor Dessert was a member of the Dessert family of hoteliers.   Patriarch Victor Dessert Sr. arrived in Spokane in 1881 and promptly built the Pacific Hotel and the Dessert Hotel.  It was in the 1930s that the latter lost an “s” and became the Desert Hotel under the hand of Victor Jr. and his wife.  They expanded the hotel and gave it a distinctive Egyptian theme décor.   The hotel is gone now, demolished in 1961

The front of the cover shows KHQ and “Sports Slants”, simply a program of sports commentary on that station.  The thing is, it was hosted by Vic Dessert himself and broadcast from the lobby of his Desert Hotel.  It aired from the mid-to late-30s well into the 1940s, apparently mostly on Thursday and Friday evenings and weekends.  The name “Sports Slants” was not unique to KHQ; it titled sports shows across the nation and all of that likely rode the coattails of a popular Warner Brothers.& Vitaphone documentary short film series by the same name.

KHQ itself went on the air in Seattle in 1922 before moving to Spokane in 1925.  It became an original NBC network station in 1935 and employed  future national newscaster Chet Huntley,.  The station changed frequencies and call letter a few times; for our purposes, it’s at 590 on the dial.