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| Paul Harvey | |
|---|---|
 Paul Harvey receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 | |
| Born | Paul Harvey Aurandt |
| Spouse | Lynne "Angel" Cooper Harvey |
| Career | |
| Show | The Rest of the Story, and Paul Harvey News |
| Station | ABC Radio Networks |
Paul Harvey Aurandt (born September 4, 1918), better known as Paul Harvey, is an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcasts News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience is estimated at 22 million people a week. Harvey likes to say he was raised in radio newsrooms.
The most noticeable features of Harvey's idiosyncratic delivery are his dramatic pauses, quirky intonations and his folksiness. A large part of his success stems from the seamlessness with which he segues from his monologue into reading commercial messages. He explains his enthusiastic support of his sponsors as such: "I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is."
Harvey is the second-oldest syndicated radio personality in America; the oldest is George Putnam.
David Emery of About.com credits Harvey for the creation of various rumors and urban legends .
Career
Harvey, born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, made radio receivers as a boy. In 1933, at a high school teacher’s suggestion, he started working at KVOO in Tulsa, where he helped clean up and eventually was allowed to fill in on the air, reading commercials and news.
Later, while attending the University of Tulsa, he continued working at KVOO as an announcer, and later as a program director. Harvey spent three years as a station manager for a local station in Salina, Kansas. From there, he moved to a newscasting job at KOMA-AM in Oklahoma City, then moved on to KXOK, in St. Louis, where he was Director of Special Events and also worked as a roving reporter.
In 1940, Harvey moved to Hawaii to cover the United States Navy as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the United States from assignment in Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Harvey then enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces, in December, 1943 where he served until March, 1944.
After leaving military service, Harvey moved to Chicago, where in June 1944, he began broadcasting from the ABC affiliate WENR. He quickly became the most popular newscaster in Chicago. In 1945, he began hosting the postwar employment program Jobs for G.I. Joe on ABC affiliate WENR. Harvey added The Rest of the Story as a tagline to in-depth feature stories in 1946. The spots became their own series in 1976. In 1951, the ABC Radio Networks carried Paul Harvey's show News and Comment coast-to-coast, and it has continued ever since.
From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, there was a televised, five-minute editorial by Paul Harvey that local stations could insert into their local news programs, or show separately. On May 10, 1976, ABC Radio Networks premiered The Rest of the Story as a separate series which provided endless surprises as Harvey dug into stories behind the stories of famous events and people. Harvey's son, a concert pianist, created and produced the series. He remains the show's only writer.
In late 2000, Harvey signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with ABC Radio Networks. A few months later, he was off the air after damaging his vocal cords. He returned in late August 2001.
Paul Harvey News has been called the "largest one-man network in the world", as it is carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations around the world and 300 newspapers. His broadcasts and newspaper columns have been reprinted in the Congressional Record more than those of any other commentator.
Harvey's News and Comment is streamed on the World Wide Web twice a day.
Former Senator Fred Thompson, known for his work on NBC's Law and Order, has recently substituted for Harvey and has been mentioned in various reports as a possible successor to Harvey on the twice-daily news programs. Other substitutes for Harvey include his son Paul Harvey Jr., Paul W. Smith, Gil Gross, and Tony Snow.
Harvey's on-air persona mirrors that of sportscaster Bill Stern. During the 1940s, the famed Stern's Sports Reel and news reel programs used many of the techniques later used by Harvey, including the style of delivery and the use of phrases such as Reel Two and Reel Three to denote segments of the broadcast -- much like Harvey's Page Two and Page Three. The discovery of many of Stern's old programs on transcription discs have led many to believe that much of Harvey's broadcasting style is based on Stern's work, including most notably the Rest of the Story feature, which is a direct parallel to a technique used weekly by Stern.
Awards
He has been named Salesman of the Year, Commentator of the Year, Person of the Year, Father of the Year, and American of the Year. He has been elected to the National Association of Broadcasters Radio Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Hall of Fame and appeared on the Gallup poll list of America's most admired men. In addition he has received 11 Freedom Foundation Awards as well as the Horatio Alger Award.
In 2005, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' most prestigious civilian award, by President George W. Bush .
On May 18, 2007 he received an honorary degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Family
When Harvey was three years old, his father, Harry H. Aurandt, was murdered. Mr. Aurandt was a civilian employee of the Tulsa Police Department. He and a friend were off duty and going hunting when they stumbled upon a stolen vehicle. During the incident Mr. Aurandt was killed.
Harvey is married to Lynne Harvey (née Cooper) of St. Louis. When Harvey was working at KXOK he met Lynne Cooper when she came to the station for a school news program. Harvey invited her to dinner, proposed to her after a few minutes of conversation and from then on called her "Angel" (and still does). A year later she said yes. Lynne Harvey is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and is a former schoolteacher. Harvey himself was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha at Culver-Stockton College in Missouri. On May 17, 2007, Harvey told his radio audience that Lynne (Angel) was suffering from leukemia.
They have one son, Paul Aurandt, Jr., who goes by the name Paul Harvey, Jr., and assists his father at "News and Comment" and "The Rest of the Story." Paul, Jr. has filled in for his father during broadcasts and was able to duplicate his father's speaking style to some extent. However, in 2006 ABC Radio signed Fred Dalton Thompson as Harvey's primary fill-in and eventual successor.
Books
- Autumn of Liberty. Garden City, New York: Hanover House, 1954.
- The Rest of the Story. Garden City, New York: Hanover House, 1956.
- Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1975.
- Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. ISBN 0-385-12768-5
- More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. New York: William Morrow, 1980, ISBN 0-688-03669-4
- Destiny: From Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. New York: William Morrow, 1983, ISBN 0-688-02205-7
- Paul Harvey's For What It's Worth. New York: Bantam Books, 1991, ISBN 0-553-07720-1.
References
External links
- Paul Harvey official website
- Argonne passes a reporter's security test Harvey's 1951 attempt to test security at Argonne National Laboratory