I Miss You, Paul Harvey

I’ve been slow to write about it, but radio commentator Paul Harvey died a little over a month ago. Known for his morning news segment on NPR, Paul was a real character who knew not only how to entertain but also how to make issues that seemed not to matter to the forefront of discussion.

NPR and Paul Harvey were, quite literally, the soundtrack to my childhood mornings. That alone probably tells you more about my parents than a full page of text ever could, but whatever. Every day I would wake up at 7am and go downstairs for breakfast, plunking myself down with my bowl of Cheerios and fruit as NPR (Camille Bohannon and Robert Siegel) streamed over the airwaves of Armed Forces Radio. Paul Harvey came on at 7:15, and his Rest Of The Story played around 7:30. After that came the Letterman Top Ten List. Programming like that tells you all you need to know about Armed Forces Radio.

Paul Harvey was a comfort for me - a security blanket. A sense that everything was OK in the world, sometimes. He was also in a way my link to America, and I took cues from him and the news he delivered as representative of the country that with I (at the time) most strongly identified. I heard his voice so much over the course of my elementary years that whenever I read the news now, I can hear Paul’s voice in my head, reading it to me if I so choose.

I will miss him.



_DZ