Paul Harvey..........................Good Day!

(group photo from 1951 Lafayette Jeff HS yearbook...
my mom at right in white sweater and corsage.)


Saturday was not a "Good Day".
Legendary and iconic radio news-guy Paul Harvey died at age 90.
It couldn't have come as a surprise at his age, but it is still an irreplaceable loss.

And, like many things this year, it brought back some fond memories of my mom.

My mom introduced me to Paul Harvey when I was a small boy.
Not literally. She introduced us through his long-running noon news broadcast on the radio.

In 1988, I had been living and working in Chicago for a few years, and I traveled back to my hometown to spend the weekend with my parents. On Saturday, as the noon hour approached, I told mom that it was almost time for Paul Harvey. I headed for the kitchen, sat down at our kitchen table, and I turned on the trusty family AM radio I had remembered so well, and I was hit with a wave of nostalgia, as I heard those familiar words that took me back so many years...
"Hello Americans....This is Paul Harvey....Stand by for NEWS!!"



I was instantly reminded of my childhood days, circa 1967, when mom would pick me up from kindergarten, bring me home, and fix my favorite peanut butter & jelly sandwich, just in time to hear that familiar voice. Although she did not realize it at the time, she had created a diehard Paul Harvey fan, just as my dad had molded a young Hoosier boy into a diehard Cubs fan.

After listening to Paul Harvey that day, mom mentioned that she had met him once in high school, when he had visited and spoken at Lafayette Jeff in 1951. She even pulled out her old high school yearbook, and showed me the picture of her waiting in a crowd to get his autograph.
I thought this was pretty cool, and took the yearbook to the library, and photocopied the picture.

After I returned to Chicago, I wrote Paul Harvey a letter, relating how I had listened to him on the radio with my mom as a child, and now as an adult. I even requested an updated autographed 8 x 10 photo of himself, signed for Mom. Within two weeks, he answered my letter,
with a note of his own, accompanied by an autographed photo for Mom, who had been known as "Jess" in high school. I was probably more excited than Mom, when I mailed these to her.

As sit typing in the "computer room" that was once my boyhood bedroom, I notice the "clock" in the lower right corner of my computer monitor, and I see that it is 11:52 am.

Less than ten minutes until Paul Harvey.

I want to tell this to Mom, but she is no longer here.
And I want to turn on my radio at noon to hear his comforting words.
But, for the first time in nearly 60 years, they won't be there.

But what I do have is a shared memory between the three of us that will never go away.

I am thankful for these memories that warm my soul, and I am encouraged that today will
in fact turn out to be a........................................................Good Day!