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When
Mercer Livermore King
passed away at the age of 91 in 1998, it was the first
time her age was revealed to most of the people who knew her. Although she was
interviewed many times during her radio broadcasting career, she always told
reporters, "My age is classified, highly classified." She
spent more than 37 years on the air with her "Cocoa Chatter" program
which became the oldest continuous women's radio program in the United States.
In 1959, she was recognized by McCall's Magazine
and awarded the "Golden
Microphone," the highest honor given exclusively to women in radio and
television.
Livermore
was there in 1950 when "Bumper 8", the very first missile launched from
Cape
Canaveral lifted off. She was becoming the first woman in the media to give an
eyewitness account of a launch. She was also there for most of the manned and
unmanned rockets launched up through the early days of the Space Shuttle
Program. She
not only covered launches for her listeners, she also interviewed almost
everyone who was anyone in the county and many people just traveling through
including five U.S. presidents. Her program was geared to cover all activities
that affected people in the area. She brought in local and county officials of
all sorts to explain about schools, housing, safety, growth issues and numerous
other topics that she felt was essential to the new people flocking to the area. Often
calling her media colleagues "my little chickadees" and her listeners
"my dears," she had a classic southern drawl and matter-of-fact way of
telling her listeners what she thought they ought to know. And she was not shy
about expressing her opinions. The result was a loyal following throughout her
broadcasting career. Born
Mercer Elizabeth Pilcher in 1907, in Macon, Ga., she moved with her parents and
five siblings to Panama City, Fla., when she was 13. She attended
Mercer
University and
Wesleyan
College in Georgia and earned her Bachelor of Arts in
psychology from the
University
of
Michigan
in Madison. She
received many honors during her career including being listed in the very first
edition of "Who’s Who in American
Woman," published in 1958. Married
to William
White
Livermore
in 1929, she had two daughters, Elizabeth
L. Norris
and Wickham
L.
Kitzmiller, also known as "Wickie Wilson." Both
daughters also became part-time reporters during the early launch days of the
1950s. Her daughter Wickie
was the first Cape Canaveral reporter for Reuters
Ltd. news service. In 1958, the first live animal ever sent into space by an
American missile was named "Wickie Mouse" in her honor, by her press
colleagues.
Her
friendship with many of the space and missile workers also resulted in an
experimental mouse launched on a Thor-Able rocket to be named "Wickie
Mouse" for her daughter. Livermore
married Cape Canaveral's first port director, George J.
King, in 1962. He passed
away five years before Livermore.
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