Harold A. Lafount

Harold Arundel Lafount (January 5, 1880 – October 21, 1952) was an American businessman who served on the Federal Radio Commission from 1927 to 1934. He was the father of Lenore Romney; the father-in-law of businessman and politician George W. Romney; and the maternal grandfather of businessman and politician Mitt Romney.

English-born, Lafount moved to the United States as a teenager and grew up in Utah. He managed several local businesses and was active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Appointed to the Federal Radio Commission by President Calvin Coolidge, he was in charge of the zone covering the Western United States. Lafount played an important part in developments and decisions regarding the regulation of the broadcasting industry in the U.S., favoring perspectives that saw radio broadcasting as a fundamentally commercial enterprise. He was also an early influence in making radio airtime available to political candidates and parties.

Lafount later managed a number of well-known radio stations in the northeastern United States on behalf of Arde Bulova and served as president of the National Independent Broadcasters. A licensing issue regarding a station Lafount co-owned resulted in a protracted regulatory and legal matter that was finally decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Early life and education, marriage and family

Lafount was born in Aston town within Birmingham, England, on January 5, 1880, the son of Robert Arthur Lafount, originally from Belbroughton, Worcestershire, and mother Emily Ethel (Hewitt). He had at least one sibling, a sister called Elsie. The family came with Mormon missionaries to the United States in 1893 and settled in Utah.

Lafount gained a degree in civil engineering from Utah State Agricultural College. He returned to England as a Mormon missionary himself, arriving in Liverpool in August 1902 and being dispatched to Sheffield. However, he returned to the U.S. from Sheffield ahead of schedule in May 1903 due to illness.

On October 28, 1903, Lafount married Alma Luella Robison (born in Montpelier, Idaho, in 1882).
They had four daughters: Elsie (born c. 1906), Lenore (born 1908), Constance (born c. 1911), and Ruth (born c. 1913).

Early career

Lafount first worked as an assistant in his father's hardware store in Logan, Utah, known as the Lafount Hardware Company, and then worked as its manager. He was in the hardware business for twelve years starting in 1903.

Beginning in 1909, while still living in Logan, Lafount held the position of general manager at the newly founded Pacific Land & Water Company of Salt Lake City, which acquired and developed land for agricultural and mining purposes. The company also had offices in Logan; on one trip between the two cities, he escaped with only bruises when the gasoline tank of his automobile exploded, hurling him some forty feet. Lafount worked at Pacific Land & Water for ten years. He was then a receiver for the Sevier River Land and Water Company from 1923 to 1927. By the mid-1920s, he was a manufacturer of earphones for crystal radio receivers. He knew prominent people socially, including LDS Church President Heber J. Grant and U.S. Senator from Utah Reed Smoot.

During the 1910s, the Lafount family had moved from Logan to Salt Lake City, where they lived in a large brick house located at Fifteenth South and Ninth East.
From 1919 to 1924, Lafount was bishop of the ward (ecclesiastical and administrative head of his congregation) in the same area where he lived. His wife worked for the church, was a leader in social charities, and gave well-received dramatic readings.
Daughter Lenore later described Harold as "a man of temper and drive" who was prone to angry outbursts.

Federal Radio Commission

Upon the recommendation of Senator Smoot, in November 1927, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Lafount to the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), a new federal body created by the Radio Act of 1927 to regulate radio use in the United States, and the first such separate agency. The commission had gotten off to a slow start earlier that year due to problems with vacancies; Lafount was slotted for the Fifth Zone of the new entity, to replace original commissioner John F. Dillon, who had died shortly after taking that position. News of the appointment came as a surprise to the other members of the commission, since Lafount had little presence in the radio industry.

Upon arriving in Washington, D.C., for his new position, Lafount wanted to thank the president personally. Told by an appointment secretary that he would need a new morning suit, Lafount spent $175 to get one. After Lafount went to the White House and gave a brief speech of thanks, President Coolidge in response said only, "In case of doubt read the law. Good-day, sir." Lafount began traveling and working for the commission right away. The United States Senate subsequently confirmed Lafount by voice vote on March 30, 1928. Three other commissioners were confirmed at the same time, two by voice votes.

Lafount's zone covered the Rocky Mountain and Pacific states as well as the territories of Hawaii and Alaska.
He traveled frequently, as part of visiting all kinds of radio stations in his large territory. At one point during 1927–1928 he took an trip in the zone, where he interviewed over 700 people, including over 100 listeners, representing over 100 radio stations. At another time during 1930 he climbed to high elevations in southern Colorado to hear the reception that ranchers, sheepherders, and rangers received. Some smaller radio stations had unsponsored time available, and he proposed the creation of citizen-based advisory boards to create programming for the benefit of community interests for such stations. Overall, however, he felt that too many small stations with weak signals were blocking reception of larger stations, and came to the conclusion that the number of stations should be reduced and the signals of the larger stations strengthened.

Over time, the commissioners' activities became less bound to their particular geographies.
Accordingly, Lafount became responsible for coordinating FRC activities with other government agencies and entities.
Lafount was in the public eye; ''The New York Times'' ran 140 stories that mentioned him during his stint on the FRC.

During his first months on the commission, Lafount was an informal member of the allocating committee that led to the FRC's 1928 reallocation of the commercial broadcast radio spectrum under General Order 40. Lafount subsequently supported the action, which enabled the growth of advertiser-based broadcasting but was criticized by some as a giveaway of a public resource (in the form of clear-channel frequencies) to large business and media interests. By 1931, Lafount was referring to General Order 40 as "the structure or very foundation upon which broadcasting has been built, and upon which the success or failure of every branch of the radio industry must depend."

Lafount believed that radio could help bring about a sense of national unity, which he favored, and that "common sources of entertainment" were among those characteristics that "constitute bonds for making our people homogenous." However, he believed that radio programming should be based upon what listeners in the mass wanted to hear, and not upon what some central authority (such as the BBC
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