LOUISVILLE, Ky. — One longtime WHAS11 viewer has kept a unique piece of the station's history inside his Louisville home for more than eight decades.
Ashley Riddle shared photos of a small white-and-blue tea cup and saucer marked with "WHAS" and "Coffee Call" in a Facebook message.
The set looks to be a custom piece from Hadley Pottery, which first opened in the 1940s.
Riddle said she found the hand-painted set in her 91-year-old grandfather's house on Thursday while taking some items to an upstairs bedroom of his home in Okolona.
"There they were sitting on a bookshelf," she said, adding that her grandfather, Joseph Shawler, has collected numerous unique items from his childhood. "It's like walking through history at times."
PHOTOS: 'Coffee Call' pottery honors former WHAS Radio show
Van Vance, a longtime host of WHAS-TV and WHAS Radio, said "Coffee Call" was a morning radio show WHAS did sometime around the 1940's and 1950s.
The show would have live music and feature audience interactions.
Shawler said he got the set when he visited the station for a live broadcast with his grandmother when he was 8 or 9.
This was when WHAS-TV, WHAS Radio, The Courier Journal and The Louisville Times lived in the same building, located where the Courier remains to this day.
"He remembered riding the elevator up," Riddle said.
During the live broadcast, the station would draw names or ticket numbers for prizes, like the cup and saucer, and on that visit Shawler won.
He told his granddaughter that he would often catch the bus near Broadway to ride downtown and hear the show live every week.
Shawler said he still tunes into WHAS11 regularly for the weather.
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