I left the air in 1971, and  showed that I meant it by turning down the morning news/talk hosting  at KSDO under VP/GM Peter Lund, later the president of CBS. Well, not all of my judgement was solid.

I chose to enter Sales because KSON GSM Mike Stafford gave me the store. A big guarantee, a lofty life insurance policy and a fancy car. The company, Jefferson Pilot, even stowed away a generous retirment nest egg for me. The capper:I was in my mid-40’s without “medical.” I abhor vacuums

Another capper: Stafford was going to avert his eyes while  I went to L.A. at least once a week, to do national V/O’s.

Mike Stafford and I went back a long way. When I was the big morning radio star and he was on the streets, I went on calls with him, and helped however I could, including writing and voicing spec spots. He never forgot.

Mike Stafford was the greatest “street fighter”I ever saw, later to become one of the most insightful managers in my experience. At that time, he was a golden haired God who roared  around Southern California in a yellow Porsche 911 scooping up buys..

He still drives the  maintained now mint condition Porsche, and now partners with another marketing savant, Bob Cerasoli, in a thriving operation, CerasoliStafford Media Management.

KSON caught the country music wave in the 70s’s  Luck swarmed around me like paparazzi on Angelina Jolie.

Typical: I was  sitting in my cubicle and, yep, I admit it, doing what no self-respecting rep ever does, looking for co-op in one of those mind numbing co-op books. There, I mined the shiniest nugget ever.

The Honda Power Generator page proclaimed that 100% co-op was available, guaranteed  in unlimited amounts.

As a reward, I was given all five of the Honda Dealers in the market, When I called on them, and told them about the co-op deal, they were stupefied. The Honda Generator factory rep didn’t know about it, either. I “generated” a million Honda Generator dollars in billing before my competing colleagues could react.

When I went into Sales, I had told myself that selling would  round me out for a dynamic management career. Then, in time, reality set in. If I segued into management, the V/O’ gravy train would derail.

I controlled a lot of money.Example:I was asked by Safeway, a 15 million dollar account, to help them select their advertising agency. Imagine how I finessed that one.

A dynamic Sales career involves more than walking hat in hand  into an agency and begging for scraps. It can be a power trip. Can you see why I didn’t miss doing morning radio?

In 1983, Nielsen conducted a survey to determine the top of the mind air talent in the market, and despite 12 year absence, I am told that I came out on top. Ay Caramba!

That same year, 1983, while ingratiating clients, and voicing nationals. I received a jolting call from New York. On the line was Michael Krauss, the television producer who created “Good Morning America” and later produced the NBC Today Show

His fun-laden voice rang out over the phone, “Harry, or should I say, ‘Mr Wonderful’?  I want you in New York in three weeks. I’m producing an across the board syndicated television show for Viacom  called ‘Hittin’ Home’ and you’re going to be one of the featured players.”

I first  met Michael in Detroit, when I was doing the morning radio show with Specs Howard in Detroit at WXYZ. Michael, then producting the protoptype of  “Good Morning America” collected me the way all television producers collect talent, mentally filing me away for future use.

He told me that Chuck Woolery and Nancy Glass were set to co-host the new show. They would interview major  celebrities in a cozy living room setting The guests would  demonstrate their favorite recipes or show how they made furniture or fixed cars, or gardened, fascinating, because a big star was showing that he or she was plain folks.

Krauss, the eternal salesman, explained my role:  that Mr Wonderful was a kind of living Tooth Fairy who went around the country doing good deeds for  deserving people. Krauss envisioned, for example, Mr Wonderful descending on a small town where the high school band had lost all their uniforms in a fire.  Mr Wonderful would jump out of a garbage can or from behind a tree or maybe out of a puff of smoke, and greet them boisterously with a  truck load of new band uniforms.

“Harry!” He exulted. “You will be the heart and soul of the show. You will be Mr Wonderful.That’s you, Harry,” 

Without inhaling, he said the airplane tickets for myself and Carol were already in the mail, and that we had free room and board at The Plaza Hotel  Before I could press him for more details, he was gone in a  figurative puff of smoke, like Mr Wonderful.

I talked it over with Carol who knew her way through the televison labrynth, having been her dad Ben Chapman’s Assistant at the Flipper studios in Miami. She firmly told me it was an opportunity that I had to grab.

My cheer leader, Mike Stafford readily  agreed. I would go to New York….and….he would keep my job list on hold, just in case..

I phoned and gave Krauss’s wardrobe lady my measurements from which she would create a white tuxedo and a silk top hat for me.

I bought my own shoes, white Nike high tops made  of nauga hide. Don’t laugh. They had to have killed a lot of naugas to make them.

I am not making light of the separation anxiety. There was no fear, but a haunting feeling that I was saying goodbye to my beloved radio.

I arrived in New York on a multi colored Fall day, and taxied to the Plaza Hotel with Carol, who was feeling the same desolation at the prospect of not seeing her friends for a long time. Anxiety does that to you, dramatizes things. 

The plush room at the Plaza was welcoming, but it wasn’t home, however there was  little time for remorse. We had just arrived and thrown our luggage on a rack when the phone rang. It was Michael Krauss.

“Mr Wonderful! Please be at Central Park tomorrow morning at 7 for make-up. A limo will pick you up. You’re going to do two segments there which we will edit, then on Tuesday morning, you will be live at  the ‘Hittin’ Home’ set with Woolery at 10. and  “bring on” one of  the Central Park segments.

“Michael!”  I shouted. “You have  me doing two segments tomorrow morning at Central Park, and you haven’t even told me anything.”  He laughed, and  sketchily described the two bits set for  the next day.

“You , Mr. Wonderful, will intercept a jogger in the Park, and reunite him with his daughter whom he hasn’t seen for ten years. Then, after lunch, you will run out from behind a bush and  intercept 100 poor Harlem school kids during their jog. They are  running in old shoes held together with duct tape. The teacher has been clued in, but the kids have no idea that Mr Wonderful is going to give them each a new pair of expensive shoes.”

Krauss was ecstatic. “Harry, can’t you just see it?” I plugged into his vision. He was right. It would be spiritual. That settled, he promised to call me back later, as he had Walter Cronkite on hold. 

The phone rang again. A lilting young  female voice was on the line urgently giving me instructions to be out front tomorrow morning at 6:15 for the limo. She spoke like all she had to do was say it and it was so. She tagged the call with, “Oh! My name is Maura. I will be your Assistant during the shoot.”

Michaul Krauss was too beset with first day logistics to get back to me. I would be on my own to “wing it”  through two demanding vignettes, complete with crew as “Mr Wonderful” in Central Park,

Maura Moynihan assured me that she  would be standing off camera at the ready to help with whatever, and, she added, kidding on the square, to ward off rowdy onlookers.

I was soon to learn that this wasn’t your typical Maura, but Maura, the brilliant 20 year old daughter of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

“Gosh Toto! This isn’t San Diego any more.”

Next week: Maura, during a break at Central Park: “Harry, meet Tim Russert.”

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away….George Carlin.