Maurice Polayes, 86; ran radio stations, owned X-ray firm

He built rudimentary radios as a teenager in the 1930s, transmitted Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington concerts from New York City into living rooms across the Eastern Seaboard years later, and ran two Rhode Island radio stations for the past decade.

The Needham resident, who also owned the X-ray sales firm Addelco Corp., died Dec. 9 of prostate cancer in the Stanley Tippett Home in Needham. He was 86.

Mr. Polayes grew up as the oldest of three siblings in New Haven. When the family’s linen bag business was wiped out in the Great Depression, he developed the work ethic he would maintain for the rest of his life, his family said.

“He’d go along the railroad tracks and collect bits of coal the family would use to heat the home,’’ said his stepson, Greg Birne of Needham. “And he worked for a bakery in exchange for breakfast, whatever he could do to get by.’’

After graduating from high school in the early 1940s, Mr. Polayes brought his childhood love for radios to the West, where he studied engineering in a Colorado college and strung telegraph wires to pay his way, family said.

Following his graduation in 1945, Mr. Polayes returned to the East Coast, taking a job with Westinghouse Broadcasting in New York City. As an engineer, he broadcast prominent concerts, such as Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller.

“To sit in your living room and be able to hear Ella Fitzgerald play at Radio City [Music Hall] was a minor miracle’’ in the 1940s, said his nephew, Roy Polayes of Hartsdale, N.Y. “So it’d be fair to say he was a pioneer in developing the recording techniques that allowed major events to be broadcast nationwide.’’

In 1948, Mr. Polayes began selling X-ray equipment for Philips Electronics. The job took him across America and Europe.

Between time at his job at Philips, he worked as a senior engineer for WLAW radio in Lawrence and set up a radio system for the Andover Police Department.

In 1959, Mr. Polayes founded Addelco Corp. in West Roxbury, a company that sold and serviced industrial X-ray devices, mainly used for inspecting aircraft engines.

He ran the company and often serviced the machines, colleagues said.

“That’s how I met him,’’ said Leland Athow of Norwich, Conn., who has worked for Addelco for the past 19 years. “In 1975, I was working for United Nuclear Corp., and when we had problems with our X-ray equipment, Moe was the one who would come and work on the machines for us. He was a very good boss. He was trusting, but he was always on top of things.’’

In 1962, Mr. Polayes met Adele “Toby’’ Oren, a model working in New York City. A year later, the two wed at Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, and Mr. Polayes effectively adopted her two sons.

The family then moved to Needham, where Mr. Polayes soon moved Addelco.

Mr. Polayes then dedicated the next 36 years to Addelco, until 1999, when he purchased two Rhode Island radio stations: WADK-AM and WJZS-FM.

“He bought them because in the back of his mind, he still loved swing music and the big band sound,’’ said his nephew Roy, who has directed the two stations for the past decade. “He wanted to rebroadcast it; his vision was to expose this new generation and restart the jazz age.’’

With his engineering skills, Mr. Polayes strengthened the signal for WADK, a news and sports talk station, and purchased a new radio tower for WJZS, also called Jazz-FM, at its broadcasting post on Block Island.

While running the stations, Mr. Polayes continued his hobby of ham radio. He transmitted his voice through a 150-foot antenna in his backyard to radio enthusiasts across the world, developing friendships.

“He talked to people all over the country and all over the world,’’ said Tony Ruggelo, 79, of Waltham, who met Mr. Polayes over the air. “We became good friends. We’d sometimes go for coffee, and then a group of us who met on the radio, we’d go out to dinner once in a while.’’

In 2007, a year after his wife died of stomach cancer, Mr. Polayes endowed a professorship at the Yale University School of Medicine. The Irving and Silik Polayes Chair of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, named to honor his late brother and uncle, who were surgeons at Yale, has enabled a Yale surgeon to perform hundreds of surgeries on children across the world to correct cranial facial disorders, such as cleft lip and cleft palate.

“It’s allowed me to work with an organization called Operation Smile,’’ said Dr. John Persing, the Yale chief of plastic surgery, who holds the endowed post. “For instance, in the past 12 months, I’ve gone to India and Brazil to operate on kids who have more need than even the kids in the states, in that they have no financial means. If the need is shown, then the surgery is just done.’’

“That is his legacy,’’ Birne said.

Mr. Polayes was a founding member of Temple Aliyah in Needham.

In addition to his stepson, Mr. Polayes leaves another stepson, Andrew; six grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Services have been held.