Cecil and Esther had a Chicago radio program that highlighted their guitar music, which ended when 3 year old Ralph was struck by polio - then Cecil was with the Chicago music firm of Lyon & Healy - teaching and doing arrangements.

WLS Radio's National Barn Dance: One of the most popular and longest running programs on radio was WLS Radio's National Barn Dance. The show blended music, comedy and down-home theatrical skits that lasted well over five decades. The Barn Dance's influence on country and western music was second only to the Grand Ole Opry, which got it's start on WSM in Nashville.

The National Barn Dance debuted on April 19, 1924, the first Saturday night after WLS signed on the air. According to Edgar Bill, the first WLS station manager: "We had so much highbrow music the first week that we thought it would be a good idea to get on some of the old time music. After we had been going about an hour, we received about 25 telegrams of enthusiastic approval. It was this response that pushed the Barn Dance!" Indeed, Sears-Roebuck management was aghast by this "disgraceful low-brow music" that was being broadcast on their new station. When Bill and Agricultural Director Samuel Guard were confronted by the angry executives, they pointed to the audiences overwhelming approval.

The Barn Dance served two distinct audiences. It targeted the rural farm audiences as well as city listeners that had come from rural communities or those whom had been told about the "good old times."

In November 1925, WLS claimed to be the first to build an audience studio when it moved to larger quarters on the 6th floor of the Sherman Hotel in downtown Chicago. The theatre was designed to hold 100 people as well as technical and control room facilities.

Early stars of the National Barn Dance included Tommy Dandurand, Tom Owens, Chubby Parker, Pie Plant Pete, Walter Peterson, Rube Tronson and Cecil & Ethel Ward among others.
——-
Obituary from the Park Forest Reporter, Wednesday, May 4, 1960:

Cecil C. "Cy" Ward 57, of 257 Lester, Park Forest, suffered a fatal heart attack on Tuesday morning in front of the Camera Corner on the Plaza. Efforts of the Park Forest Inhalator squad to revive him were in vain. Ward, well known in the music business, was for many years a radio personality on WLS and other stations. He also was an instructor in string instruments and had a studio in the Lyon-Healy building in Chicago. He resided in the village for one year, coming here from the West Flossmor area. Survivors include his wife, Willodean; three daughters, Barbara, 16; Elizabeth, 6 and Dorothy, 3; and a son by a previous marriage, Ralph, 31, of Chicago. Rev. Gilbert H. Hall of the Flossmor Baptist Church will officiate. Interment will be in Keytesville, Missouri.
——-
NOTE: His burial in Keytesville was influenced by his sister Ethel (Mrs. Paul) Carter, the only member of the large family who lived most of her life in Missouri. She however, along with Paul, are buried in nearby Moberly, Randolph County, Missouri. She also influenced the burial of the mother of them all, Nettie Elizabeth (nee Cassingham) in Keytesville, though she expired in the Dallas, Texas area - - odd though it seems, next to the husband from whom she had been separated, but not divorced, for many years (circa 1915 - 1920). She and her sons Harry (Ethel's twin), John, Frank, Cecil, Walter, and "Dan" along with daughters Erma, Hallie, and Ella, all removed to Chicago, though not en mass; Harry and John later to California. Her first born, Mary Ann (my mother) made her home in Fort Smith, Arkansas where all seven of her children were born. In 1932, she and husband John P. Haskin (also of the Keytesville area) and their family relocated in Chicago where, on a few occasions, we had the pleasure of hearing Cecil play his Hawaiian guitar, accompanied by the then-called Esther on a Spanish guitar. I was told by Aunt Erma Bos that Cecil had taught himself to play on a guitar somebody had given him; learned by playing records on an old Victora set on slow - just about driving them all crazy! Whatever, he was among the best!....Patricia Jane Haskin Helander.