Shawn McGovern Memorial
September 27th, 2024
Thanks to Shawn’s sister, Jeanne McGovern Acuna, for putting together a gathering to remember a unique character in our lives.
We blasted in late, GRRRRRRRRRRR, we were headed up to Tettegouche afterwards, and, well, GRRRRRRR, and missed some/most of the service. In the rush, something I forgot to bring up was how I learned much about sound and electricity from him, and I didn’t realize it until later, like less than a year. How was it that later that I walked into KFAI and started in radio, 2 programs over the years, and years of live on-air mix of the 9-Oscar show at the Riv, and bar and concert sound (I’ll never forget the 5 part monitor mix for Sweet Honey in the Rock. Bernice Johnson Reagon wanted, and got, just right).
I did bring up remembrances of the many, many pages of calculations for the speakers he made (my brother gave me his, and Shawn replaced the blown tweeters a couple years ago), from the design of the basic box (his time as a cabinet maker paid off) to determining the number of winds for the hand wound crossovers. Hand wound, blister inducing, crossovers.
This one was from FIFTY years ago when we lived on 12th — I didn’t know he was sending himself designs to “copyright.”
Jeanne and Tom had found many examples and put together a display of his work, his business plan, and he’d even received a grant to get that business going — he had a well stocked shop, and at long last got a space to work in. He gave that rolling box of pipe clamps to Alan years ago.
It was good to see the family, meet the “new” ones, especially Jeanne’s son who is working for Sierra Club down in Rochester. Welcome to southeast Minnesota! I’d presume we’d have projects in tandem, hoping so!
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