Posted on 03/02/2009 5:45:05 AM PST by shortstop
Dear Paul Harvey,
It’s our turn to wish you a Good Day.
We’ve missed you on the radio and have heard that you’re on sick call, and we wanted you to know that you’re in our thoughts and prayers.
And you’re in our lives.
You’ve been on the air longer than most of us have been alive, and many of us can specifically remember listening to you for most of our lives. When we were little kids, you were on mom and dad’s radio, and now our little kids hear you on mom and dad’s radio. You’re a tradition we happily cling to.
Though a radio network already uses the name, you, sir, are the voice of America. You are the small-town voice from home, the fellow who put the spirit of Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost and Norman Rockwell on the radio. You are as American as a Shaker hymn.
You live in Chicago, but we all believe you can see rows of ripening corn out your window, and indeed you can. You can see this country out your window, and you can see its heart. You’ve found the Midwestern chord that resonates from sea to shining sea, that is as American as family and home.
You have the spirit that some of us think Ronald Reagan invented, but which you both knew was the spirit of America rising. The simple faith that if we do our best, tomorrow will be a better day, that there’s nothing we can’t handle, that life is an unfolding tableau of wonder and awe.
You remind us, a couple of times a day, that life is meant to be met with a smile, that we are a people of optimism and gratitude and good cheer, that right is right and wrong is wrong and a man or woman will do well in life if they stay on the right side of the line.
You have always been a gentleman, a man of good manners and honor. Those are traits you at first reflected and later taught, as society forgot its own manners along the way and some of us looked to you for a reminder.
You have held our hand for a quarter of our country’s history.
People working jobs and raising families and wrestling with the tasks of life have relied on you for an update and an explanation, a window onto the blur of news they trusted you to sort through and pass on.
You told us about McCarthy and the missile crisis and the assassination of a president. From the civil rights marches to the Beatles to Vietnam and Watergate. You told us about the men in space and the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall. When Buddy Holly died and Marilyn Monroe died and Pope John Paul 2 died.
You’ve gotten us through three or four gasoline crises, eleven presidents and a half a dozen wars – and that’s just since you went national.
You were the eyes and ears, Mr. Harvey, and you always told it straight. You respected us and you respected the truth and you respected our country. You made us care about how the crops were coming in, how the stars shined over Reveille, what the new strawberries tasted like. You are the mayor and storyteller of America’s hometown.
You taught us that the most important news each day had to do with some fine couple who had pledged their lives to one another and meant it. That honored them and inspired us.
And when you turned your pen loose, you were as good a writer as we’ve had. Some of your Saturday talks were literature, and we stood transfixed in our kitchens or sat at our destination in our cars, not moving, not wanting to miss a word. Time and time again, for two full generations, the purest and most beautiful thoughts we’ve heard have been yours. Your pulpit is a network of radio towers and we’ve been happy to be in the congregation.
Which is all our way of saying, “Thank you, sir, and God bless you.”
You have given your long life to us, in little bits on the radio, and we recognize that and appreciate it. And we appreciate you.
You were the companion of our long-passed grandparents, and you are our companion still. You are not a friend of the family, you are family.
So get well soon, and give our best to your Angel.
With love and gratitude,
America
I cannot say that about ANY other Media Personality. Not a single one!
He had CHARACTER and FIDELITY to his wife and nation. That’s why he is set apart from other broadcasters. He lived his own life conservatively while most are hypocrites who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
On past pheasant hunting trips to the N.W. corner of Kansas, I always enjoyed listening to the local radio stations where the market updates were about cattle and corn futures, planting updates and the local "things to swap" and Mrs. Jones on cedar st. has a piano for sale............Thats what Paul Harvey reminded me of.
Mr. Harvey was a constant in my life for the past 20 or so years, ever since I started listening to WMAL 630 in the Wash DC region. I know he had a set back when his wife died, but they led such wonderful lives together!
I will only realize the loss of his “gifts” to the listeners in the weeks and years to come - radio will not be the same. As saddened as I am at his passing - I am so grateful for his years of the radio.
RIP Mr. Harvey, a life well lived.
Paul Harvey is someone I have listened to since I came to these shores 47 years ago. On and of through those years I would hear his broadcasts. Being on the same network as Limbaugh and Hannity I got to hear a great deal ore of him. Always a class act and a signature of our passing through life. His passing marks another milestone in our passage through life and it well tells us we are all fast approaching that day when we ourselves will meet our maker. Those who have not had the pleasure to hear him all these years will never know what this country once was and likely will never be again.
I despised his presentation of debunked urban legends as fact, his made-up “rest of the story” pieces, and endorsement of inferior products, but his broadcasts were enjoyable as entertainment, and I admire his character in his personal life.
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