Paul Harvey's last Saturday Broadcast, Feb. 7, 2009... [VIDEO]

"A great tree has fallen, and left an empty space in the sky…"

No, this is not a column about the July 11 storm, although I have seen enough storm-damaged yards to know that many of you can understand that feeling.

Today's words are not about missing trees, but missing words.

I still reach for the radio dial, when I am in my car, at noon.

For years -- no, decades-- the noon hour was Paul Harvey Time. The quote at the top of this column is all that you can find now on the official Paul Harvey Web site.

I remember as a child sitting in the back of my parents 1970-something Ford station wagon with the wood paneling on the sides, listening to "The Rest of the Story." Then during a summer job in the mid-1980s, I had a boss who made everyone sit quietly during our lunch hour as we listened to Paul Harvey's 15-minute broadcast.

We were not alone. For decades, more than 1,200 radio stations played his broadcast, which was heard by more than 20 million people each week.

For years, tens of millions of people listened to Paul Harvey every day at noon (and many more heard his shorter broadcasts in the morning as well as his "Rest of the Story" pieces in the evening).

Back then, my boss listened to him on 92.3 FM. But between 1985 and 2009 many radio stations stopped playing his broadcast. In the past few years, I was scouring the AM stations to find any station in eastern Iowa that I could hear through the static. Up until Paul Harvey's death, I could hear him throughout the lunch hour if the car radio was in the right part of Benton County. I could start one broadcast at 12:05 and then tune in to two more broadcasts on different stations before 1 p.m., so I could catch anything I missed and so I could hear the best parts again.

Do you recall the feeling you get when trying to write down a definition of a word you know well?

That's how I feel now, trying to tell to readers who may have been too young to hear Paul Harvey what his broadcasts were like.

Let me try.

In fifteen minutes (minus commercials, both his and the local radio stations') Paul Harvey would update us on all the major headlines, share some stories that were important but that many other in the media missed, give us some commentary on current events, and end with something funny. He called the last part of his broadcast, "For What It's Worth."

Along the way, he would also tell us about a couple who had been married for more than 60, or sometimes 70 years. He always hoped to have a couple reach their 75th Anniversary but I do not believe that ever happened.

Sometimes, after giving us some horrible news, he would say, "Now, wash your ears out with this…" Then he would share something funny or uplifting. He would often say, "perhaps the most significant news of the day is this…"

He often mentioned local news, so it was quite possible you might hear about your town, or a town near you on Paul Harvey.

At its height, Paul Harvey news and comment was heard on 1,200 radio stations across the country, as well as many across the world and the armed forces radio network. Paul Harvey was big on saluting soldiers, firemen and cops -- no doubt in part because he was the son of a police officer who was killed by robbers while off duty, when Paul was only 3 years old.

When Paul Harvey was absent from his broadcast, there were some very good substitutes who took his place. Guys like Gill Gross, Dave Ross, Doug Limerick, Paul Smith, and even Paul Harvey Jr., who also researched and wrote the "Rest of the Story" that we heard each evening. That short program shared some interesting detail about a well-known person. At the end of the broadcast, Paul Harvey would name that person and say, "Now you know the rest of the story."

I became disturbed throughout the 1990s, as more and more radio stations dropped Paul Harvey. It became harder to hear his broadcasts, and I realized that millions of Americans were missing something important.

Paul Harvey kept going well into his 80s. He kept going when his wife (and producer) became ill. He took a break but kept going after she died.

Thanks to Google and Youtube, I am listening as I write this to Paul Harvey's last Saturday broadcast, from Feb. 7, 2009. He died at age 90 three weeks later, with two years still on his ABC Contract. I also listened to a broadcast from 1963, when he was only 45 -- my age. His voice sounded exactly the same then as he did at age 90.

Half of people in their 70s use the Internet, Paul Harvey told us that final Saturday in 2009. One of his advertisers that day: Lifelock. In the 1960s, his advertisers included a Chicago insurance company which offered a free sample of a life insurance policy so listeners could see how easy it was to understand the policy. Paul Harvey was big on saying that he would not advertise anything until he tried it himself.

Lessons from 1963

Listening to that familiar voice from that broadcast of nearly 48 years ago was as enlightening as it was in 2009.

Paul Harvey gave us an update on Vietnam -- he mentioned the name of the 76th U.S. soldier died in that war.

Two presidents and seven years later (after another 50,000 U.S. soldiers had died there), Paul Harvey would address Richard Nixon, whom he had supported, on the topic of his expansion of the Vietnam War.

"Mr. President," said Paul Harvey in 1970. "I love you, but you're wrong."

Also on that November day, history was made, or at least announced. Paul Harvey told Americans how the Detroit Tigers had traded Rocky Colavito, how that Sen. Carl Vinson had announced his retirement, and how that there was unrest in Baghdad, a place Paul Harvey would mention often throughout his career.

During the first Gulf War, Paul Harvey had one of the funniest jokes about that piece of American history. Troops, he said, had captured one of Saddam Hussein's sons. However, he added, "They were not able to bag Dad."

Paul Harvey's signature style of finding humorous ways to say things was also quite clear in 1963. He spoke about a bizarre car accident that day, and then said:

"Another thing you might have missed: There's a note on a place mat in a restaurant in Covingting, Ky., which says, quote, 4,076 people died last year from gas. Twenty-nine inhaled it. Forty-seven put a match to it and 4,000 stepped on it."

But the most interesting Paul Harvey wisdom I remember from his November 1963 broadcast is a long quote about the power of words. Radio people often like to discuss the importance of telling stories only with words. Paul Harvey did it best:

"They say one picture is worth 1,000 words," he said. "Well, let's see about that…

"You give me 1,000 words and I'll give you the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm… and the Hippocratic Oath and a sonnet by Shakespeare and the Preamble to the Constitution and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and I'll still have enough words left over for just about all of the Boy Scout Oath. And I wouldn't trade you those things for any picture on earth."

The tragedy

I wondered, when Paul Harvey died, who would take his place.

We soon found out the heartbreaking answer: Nobody. Despite the fact that many people were quite able and willing to carry on Paul Harvey's mission, and the fact that millions were eager to listen, Citadel Broadcasting, which had bought ABC Radio the previous year, simply shut down the entire show, leaving an audience of millions without the daily news source we had depended on.

The tragedy is not that Paul Harvey died; all newsmen do. The tragedy is that modern American media moguls, specifically the suits at Citadel Broadcasting, decided Paul Harvey did not need to be replaced. They were wrong.

I remember clearly the week that Paul Harvey died. There were a handful of tributes, some of them very nice and well-written. But those tributes lasted only minutes. That same week, American TV shows and even news broadcast spent hours discussing a ridiculous episode of "Bachelor."

The saddest thing about that week is that Paul Harvey would have been the first to point out how ridiculous it was to spend hours debating a foolish and quite meaningless "reality" show and only minutes honoring a man who impacted millions, every day, for decades.

If you miss Paul Harvey, or want to find out more, you can hear a few broadcasts HERE.

Comments

Submit a Comment

Please refresh the page to leave Comment.

Still seeing this message? Press Ctrl + F5 to do a "Hard Refresh".

RG August 31, 2011, 9:17 pm Dean, a great tribute. He was truly gifted and I tried not to miss his broadcasts.
AMS September 1, 2011, 1:06 pm It is sad that the same line of thinking used by Citadel Broadcasting will be evident this very weekend in the abbreviated, Jerry Lewis less MDA telethon. Yes, Paul Harvey is missed and so are many others, who put heart and soul into their endeavors, who truly thought they made a difference, only to have it end because someone with a MBA didn\'t understand the impact of their own decision. At least Paul was not alive to see it end.
GE April 4, 2015, 2:57 pm Our family too was a multi-generational group of loyalists. There was & is a void in our lives because as other mbrs of the media came & went, Paul Harvey seemed to on our radio forever. I heard him as a little kid in the 50\'s when Dad came home for lunch & the radio was turned on at noon; my children listened to him 50 years later.
I would disagree slightly that he was not recognized at the time of his death; there was plenty of ocverage in Iowa media: newspapers, radio & TV but then he was a son of the midwest. We still miss him VERY much....
AJ May 28, 2021, 1:50 pm I just now found this page. I grew up with and lived my entire life with Paul Harvey News and Commentary, from 1958 through his death in 2009. My father always had Paul Harvey's broadcasts on and like so many others...I was addicted as soon as I was old enough to understand what I was hearing. Over the years I was fortunate enough to trade traditional mail with this very humble man. I had written to him to thank him because unbeknownst to him, through his broadcast he had helped to make me the man that I am, and I wanted to thank him. And he was kind enough to write back. That says a lot about Paul Harvey. I still have his reply to this day....
RH December 30, 2022, 12:12 pm Your tribute to Paul Harvey should be printed or broadcast on all media on either his birthday or death as a reminder as to what American people are truly missing in our media today. He kept us very much aware of the importance of honesty in reporting without bias. Like you I listened as he spoke each day on radio as a youngster. I was able to meet him at a Salvation Army advisory dinner meeting in the 70’s. Truly an amazing and gifted man. I always hoped that Paul Jr would have taken up the mantle and legacy. Well done sir and thank you for memory lane.