Paul Harvey has passed away

You want to know one of the biggest reasons why this blog exists?

It's because for the longest time, I dreamed of being like Paul Harvey.

I first discovered Harvey as a kid in elementary school. Dad always had one of the local AM radio stations playing on his truck as he drove my sister and I to school, and the timing of the commute every morning happened to coincide with Harvey's fifteen minutes of news. And then later on I started listening to his "The Rest of the Story..." broadcasts.

That's what first turned me on to realizing the "other side" of the people and incidents that I read about in the history books. That more often than not there was something else that for whatever reason never got widely chronicled, but always made you appreciate that much more the person or situation.

Well, when blogging came about, picking up on the more weird or odd news of the day, and sharing the more unusual tales from times past, became something that I relished doing here. And there was never a time that I've done that, that I didn't think of Paul Harvey. That I could hear that distinctive "Paul Harvey... good day!" sign-off that he always used.

Today, Paul Harvey, radio legend and communicator extraordinaire, signed off for the last time... and passed away at the age of 90 at his winter home in Phoenix, Arizona.

I am compelled to speak of him as Thomas Jefferson once said of Benjamin Franklin: "No one can replace him." He was... and will ever remain... a true American original.

Categories: deaths, paul harvey, radio