"Not a bad guy"...."I'm getting *out* of the business"..."I never had a dinner" (which turned out to be true).The way RKO fired Jerry was disgraceful!
Yes but when a new regime came into WRKO they let Jerry
do one last goodbye show. I have it on tape. March of ‘03
I think? Jerry died a couple months later (and I have
Howie’s tribute show from around then)
I also remember Jerry trying to do a show on “WMEX AM 1060”
(now a biz talk station). he sounded confused and a bit
slow; some of it may have been trying to get used to
a new station/board but he also was suffering from some
kind of disease—Parkinsons or something—and that may have been a part of it.
Jerry’s obit in the Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/daily/29/williams_obit.htm
-—Chip Ford of Citizens for Limited Taxation credits his entry into political activism to Williams’ campaign on the seat belt issue.
“He had his finger on the pulse of the average citizen, the taxpayer,” Ford said. “And they loved him because he was speaking for them. He was saying things they didn’t have the voice to say.”
Williams’ cantankerous style and populist views made him popular among listeners but often infuriated politicians and public officials. He became an especially harsh critic of then-Gov. Michael Dukakis.
“He would take his prisoners and he would fight his battles to the end,” said Lyle. “But he always led with his heart. He was very passionate, very expressive.”
He recalled how Williams would leap out of his chair when he got excited or riled up, and flail his hands around as he talked, whether he was behind the microphone or in public.
Williams was able to score important interviews at WROL, Fritz said, such as getting Malcolm X on his show at a time when the civil rights leader didn’t like talking to the media.
He was also one of the first people, back in the 1980s, to be “yelling and screaming” about Boston’s Big Dig highway project, accurately predicting that it couldn’t be finished on time or on budget, Ford said.