[Deathwatch] Paul Harvey, radio broadcaster, 90

[Deathwatch Central]

Broadcaster Delivered 'The Rest of the Story'

By Joe Holley
Sunday, March 1, 2009

Paul Harvey, 90, a Chicago-based radio broadcaster whose authoritative
baritone voice and distinctive staccato delivery attracted millions of
daily listeners for more than half a century, died Feb. 28 in Phoenix.

A spokesman for ABC Radio Networks told the Associated Press that Mr.
Harvey died at his winter home, surrounded by family. No cause of death
was immediately available.

Mr. Harvey was the voice of the American heartland, offering to
millions his trademark greeting: "Hello Americans! This is Paul Harvey.
Stand by! For news!"

For millions, Paul Harvey in the morning or at noon was as much a part
of daily routine as morning coffee.

"Paul Harvey News and Comment" was a distinctive blend of rip-and-read
headline news, quirky feature stories and, usually, a quick
congratulation to a couple who had been married for 75 years or so. The
news stories, and Harvey's distinctive take on them -- usually, but not
always, from a conservative political perspective -- flowed seamlessly
into commercial messages for products Mr. Harvey endorsed.

One of radio's most effective pitchmen, he kept sponsors for decades,
attracted by such features as "The Rest of the Story," mesmerizing
little tales, cleverly written, that featured a surprising O
Henry-style twist to stories listeners thought they already knew.

In 2000, ABC Radio Networks awarded Mr. Harvey, then 82, a 10-year,
$100 million contract, a tribute not only to his gargantuan listening
audience of about 22 million people but also to his uncanny ability to
inspire trust in his listeners -- trust that the products he pitched
were worth buying because Paul Harvey said so.

A 1985 survey found that the four most popular radio programs on the
air nationally were four of his broadcasts in different time slots.

Paul Harvey was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa on Sept. 4, 1918.

Descended from five generations of Baptist preachers, in high school,
he was a champion orator. A teacher helped him get his first radio job,
at KVOO in Tulsa, when he was 14.

He worked as a staff announcer at KVOO while taking classes at the
University of Tulsa and then became the station manager at KFBI in
Abilene, Kan. Work at stations in Oklahoma City, St. Louis and Michigan
followed.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943 and received an
honorable medical discharge a few months later after a training injury.


After his military service, Paul Harvey Aurandt shortened his name to
Paul Harvey and moved to Chicago, where he began doing his twice-daily,
15-minute news commentaries. In 1951, he persuaded an advertising
agency to take the broadcast nationwide over a new network, ABC.

With his broadcast colleague Walter Cronkite, he was a runner-up in the
1969 Gallup Poll's choice of the most admired man in America.

In the 1960s, he editorialized against what he saw as a culture of
permissiveness on college campuses and in the media and in support of
the Vietnam War. As early as 1966, however, he asked that the troops be
brought home. Perhaps his most famous broadcast occurred May 1, 1970,
when he urged President Richard Nixon to reverse his decision to expand
the war into Cambodia. Swayed by his son, a conscientious objector, he
began by saying, "Mr. President, I love you . . . but you're wrong." He
called on the president to stop the war.

His broadcast prompted a barrage of 24,000 letters and thousands of
phone calls, including one from the White House.

A self-described "student of biographies," Mr. Harvey in 1976
inaugurated a five-minute daily broadcast called "The Rest of the
Story." Recounting the lives of history-makers without revealing their
identities until the end of his narrative, he reveled in quirky
tidbits, coincidences and twists of fate.

Among the "Rest of the Story" items was the 13-year-old boy who
received a cash gift from President Franklin Roosevelt and later led a
socialist revolution (Fidel Castro) and the celebrated trial lawyer who
never finished law school (Clarence Darrow). Most were written by Mr.
Harvey's son, Paul Aurandt.

For his newscast, Mr. Harvey relied on what he called his "Aunt Betty"
test. Betty was his sister-in-law, an "old-fashioned housewife" who
lived in Missouri. If he decided that a story was too complicated or
dull for Betty, he either rewrote or discarded it.

He wrote his own copy and insisted that he would not endorse a product
that he did not believe in. He invented words that found their way into
the vernacular, including "guesstimate," "Reaganomics,"
"bumpersnickers" and "skyjacker."

Mr. Harvey's wife, Lynne Cooper Harvey, died in 2008. He is survived by
son Paul.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary