Last week, I related how I had been installed in the morning slot in 1969 at KCBQ by GM Dick Casper, and was instrumental in restoring the station to market dominance.

I described how KGB PD Buzz Bennett had conspired with GM Dick Casper to invade KCBQ in late 1970, and blow me out of what seemed to be a secure gig,

Running this through the meat grinder of my mind even some 36 years later, the truth is inescapable.  In radio, a firing is as near death as one can get. Writing this, my life involuntarily flashed before my eyes.

Flashback….In 1955, when KCBQ launched, we took nothing ratings  and made something big out of them. The nearest to God-like mankind can get. Radio creationism in action.

By 1957, KCBQ had become a much copied radio station, air checked by major market players as a pristine example of what was ten years later to be basically the Boss format. We enhanced it from there.

The dazzling production, bounteous cash and prize giveaways, audience participation, .personalized jingles, KCBQ stabs, always looking forward, never looking back, generous sincere cross plugging, suspenseful billboarding, seamless transitions between me, Ralph James - later to be the voice of Ork in Mork and Mindy - and perhaps the greatest afternoon man I  ever heard, Don Howard,

Our PD was Al Heacock, destined for the Pantheon of Broadcasters. More about him later. 

I told you how, in 1968, after returning to San Diego from Midwest triumphs, Millie Mather, the traffic lady campaigned with GM Dick Casper to bring me aboard foundering KCBQ, to work my magic.

Casper had never heard of me, much less knew that I had been a San Diego icon before going to the Midwest to team with Specs Howard

He relented after several weeks of Millie’s version of the Chinese water treatment. Within three months (ARB Jan-Mar 69) of my start on the air. I had fulfilled Millie’s promise, and the station was on top again from #5 in the market.  

My learning experience with Millie inspired me to thinking about the value of being kind, and helpful to my co-workers and friends, not expecting anything in return, to have faith in it as a way of conducting one’s self in every day life and at work. Millie later turned out to be my  chief  benefactor.

The great American writer, Henry James, wrote that the three most important things in life are: First, be kind. Second, be kind and third, be kind.

When I first read this, I thought it was pap .I was an up and coming jock, a gifted 20 year old talent in 1947, starting at KGBC in Galveston. who figured he needed no one.

KLAC VP/GM Don Fedderson heard me in 1949, doing national big band remotes in Galveston, and as a result, I was beckoned to do afternoon drive at KLAC.

From Galveston to Los Angeles in 1950. It was like going from Pop Warner to the NFL, thrust into the company of such luminaries as Bill Stewart, and Al Jarvis. The cast of radio and TV stars at KLAC included :Liberace, Leo Carrillo, and Betty White. Jack Narz, later  the television game show host was a staff announcer.  

The radio and television sales reps included Elton Rule, a blonde God in a white Caddie convertible., who went on to run ABC Television Network.

I was well on my way upward when, in 1951,  I received my draft notice.

Divine Intervention! E-1 Bryan Williams, a home town buddy happened to be sitting at a desk processing draftees at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. He did a double take when he looked up from his papers and saw me, He winkled and  put me in the brand new experimental  301^st Logistical Command, instead of the infantry.

I first met fellow draftee, the iconic Al Heacock at Camp Rucker  in Dothan, Alabama during basic. Google him and you will see that he went on to be Westinghouse guru Bill Kaland’s main consort and wound up running KDKA in Pittsburgh., But I veer.

I knew in my sinking heart that Al was going to outstrip me in the army when on our very first day as recruits at Rucker, we lined up in a Keystone Cop-like  formation, and he arrived at that gathering in droopy fatigues, carrying a fat leather brief case which he laid down by his side and snapped to his endomorphic version of “Attention!.”

 In 1951, Al and I spent a lot of time together, talking radio and how we intended to turn it every way but loose when we left the army.

                        Fast Forward:

Al stayed at Camp Rucker in Dothan for his entire two year hitch, a period in which he ran KVIK. the post radio station, and voluntarily re-wrote the army Special Services Manual. The army put him on a fast track to a Master Sergeancy.

In 1951, Al and I split up when I was ordered to Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville Alabama., where the German rocket genius, Werhner von Braun presided over the Ordinance Corp’s fledgling attempts to get a rocket airborne.

I got to know him and wrote PIO puff pieces that got the attention of the  Redstone C.O. He was General H N Toftoy, a soldier’s soldier, who in the waning days of WW11, parachuted into the woods near Peenemunde to a pre-arranged gathering of German rocket scientists and spirited them by train through the Russian lines with phony papers, destined for Huntsville.

In a new army outfit, all of the rank slots (Table of Organization) are  wide open. I rose to a single rocker Sergeancy  in nine months and gradually took over the Post Theater, Athletics, and the Service Club. All this while writing on the side for the Public Information Office.

My command structure consisted of an affable  major, John Horan,  and General Toftoy with no else above me to muck things up.

With my Class A security clearance, I was privy to von Braun’s’ new Redstone Rocket Project.

My PIO job was to put a happy face on our  many Apocalyptic launches at White Sands, despite standing in a thick bunker with a stunned Who’s Who of Washington elites, dutifully witnessing the glistening experimental Redstone Rocket blast off in a roaring inferno, fly maybe a hundred feet vertically, then make a slo-mo rebound back to earth, crashing onto  its finned tail. then cantering over in an earth shaking explosion.

Finally, at last, a successful launch, and I had something positive to write about, but not for long. My two year hitch was up.

On my last day in the army, I bade a truly solemn farewell to my staff of several  RA’s, and Emily Vickers, the Service Center chief.

Reminiscing with them about the good times we had had that year brought me back to the times when I had emceed a number of live swing band broadcasts at the Center that were beamed across  the state in a regional network.

One special night stands out in my memory. That evening as we were about to go on the air in one minute, there was line trouble, leaving the broadcast in peril.

PFC Al Holtzman, a rocket techie, bounded out of his first trumpet chair, ran to the closet where the Service Club wiring all came into the building, dove into the tangled maze of lines and  circuits and found the problem, and fixed it in seconds. His fingers became a blur like in  those documentaries in which  they speed up snails, or star fish. making  them go 60 MPH.

The wiring was neatly re-assembled and he was back in his chair ready to blow the opening lead notes of the broadcast theme

General Toftoy happened to be there that night and watched this performance. He got Hotzman’s name, bumped him a couple of ranks and put him in charge of a Section.

That night, Toftoy whispered to me, “A PHD should not be a PFC, unaware that he had made a “funny.” The band consisted of amazing college musicians The music was swing and the great 40’s ballads, suing by Emily, who could scat like Ella Mae Morse or sing sweetly on a big league level. They played music while it was still simply called “ Music,” instead of “MOR” or “Big Band.”  

Breaking into my reverie, the phone at my abandoned desk jangled. I was summoned to General Toftoy’s office at the main headquarters.

On the way to HQ, I passed several colonels whom I had snubbed salute- wise during that entire year, and saluted them all snappily.

I did not “dis” them maliciously. I just didn’t think about it. Besides there were often times when I outranked them, umpiring softball and baseball games in which they played.

 The general left word to usher me straight in. I entered, snapped off a salute and Toftoy, amused, by my sudden soldierly demeanor, asked me to sit down.

“Harry,”-He didn’t call me “sergeant”- Can I get you a cup of coffee? Anything?”

I said, “No, thank you, Sir.” I had always practiced protocol with this great man and felt strange sitting in his presence.

He walked from behind his desk and sat next to me, and said grimly, “Harry, I have never gotten as many complaints about a soldier as I did while you were here. You always needed a haircut and a shine. Your khaki’s needed ironing and you never saluted anyone, except me.”

I braced myself for a final chewing out by one of the greatest soldiers in the army. He smiled, and said, “But, you did a helluva job here. Dr von Braun  was always  asking me to  promote you and get you a  warrant officership.”.

He laughed. “Of course we are talking about a man who paid no attention to authority, either.”

That was my cue to laugh, Toftoy knew first hand how much von Braun despised the Section Colonels who rode herd over the Germans, demanding everything in centuplicate and bogging things down in the bureaucracy.”

The general told me “He would come in here behind closed door and call them “verdammten Obersten -  Damned Colonels!”

“Von Braun begged me to give them (the Germans) a cabin in  the mountains away from everything and they would have a rocket in six months.”

The general was venting. I’ll never forget it. He then got around to the reason for his summoning.

The general told me that the Ordinance’s Corp’s Redstone Rocket project was in danger of being taken over by the Air Force and that he needed all of the talented  writers he could find to write the Ordinance Corp’s story. He then offered me a key PIO position at JPL- Jet Propulsion :Laboratory- in Pasadena.

“I know you want to go back to Hollywood. This will give you a chance to go back there, get your bearings and help us at the same time.”

Try saying no to a general, much less H N Toftoy. I hesitantly  told him that I would return to Hollywood and asked him to give me a week or so to think about it.

He nodded my dismissal , and I got up, saluted,  about faced, and left.

That was the last I saw him or seriously thought about staying in the army.
 

I had “dancing feet.”  I did not use that frivolous  phrase in describing why I was not re-upping in my  profound thank you note to Him.

I spent a year trying to reconnect with a gig in Hollywood and failed. KLAC had been sold and the new owner, Mort Hall, imperiously informed me he was not bound by law to rehire me after the army.

Then I dropped down to San Diego where I landed a job at KCBQ, six months before the Bartells bought the station, and changed my destiny forever.

Lee Bartell and I hit it off. After a few weeks, I boldly walked into the hugely reserved man’s office and said,” Lee, you need a program director. It turned out he did. I told him about Al Heacock who was, by now, discharged.

Lee arranged to meet him in New York and hired him within minutes.

Al programmed us in the way that would have done the next generation of Boss visionaries proud. We even evolved beyond that elegant format and into a more personality mode, too complex to describe here. More on that  later.

In 1960, after five years at KCBQ , Al and I left San Diego and went to New York to WADO, where his programming was heard by Westinghouse Deity. Bill Kaland, who hired him to program WBZ in Boston,. then he was fast tracked to manage KDKA in Pittsburgh. .

I went to Westinghouse station KYW in Cleveland to team with Specs Howard in a highly successful show. The pipe was laid by Heacock, by then Westinghouse boss Bill  Kaland’s right arm.

All I have told you here took me a millisecond to recall in my mental flashback, much faster than it has taken you to read about it.

Having already described my post Cleveland-Detroit 1969-71 years at KCBQ in prior episodes. I will jump to 1971 the year of my ouster from KCBQ.

Dick Casper had  privately confessed to me  that my firing was as a result of my demanding a lot of money after two years at KCBQ.

Bad timing. Buzz Bennett confidentially promised Casper that he could bring in five jocks for the same money that I wanted, and score big. Casper went for it.

To his credit Bennett produced…. and this led to his downfall. Dick Casper and Buzz Bennett buoyed by the exhilaration of having scored good ratings, conspired to confront Bartell Radio “Corporate” and …get this….demand more money. Casper and Bennett were jointly fired -- caught in the same psychic trap that snared me.

Lore had it that Casper was blown out for chronically “:end running” upper management. That was partly true, but the bigger non starter was that he and Bennett had ganged up on Corporate in a  “more money” demand.

It is said that after his embarrassing termination, Buzz Bennett’s cover story to his jocks was that he was resigning out of sympathy for Casper.

The cosmic joke is that the Bennett and Casper stepped on the same EID that had been laid for me.

Who was it who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  I think it was either Spinoza, T S Eliot. Lee Abrams,, Randy Michaels, Peter Lund, or  Chuck Blore. Probably not Blore.  He’s too busy finishing off his new book, coming very soon.

I heard that Buzz Bennett, after several years of Consulting, dropped out of sight of his admirers… and me, who now grudgingly respects him

Luckily, the EID targeting me was a semi-dud that only served to wake me up, and blow me onto a new path.  

About my “kindness” premise in this series: I’ve told you about Al and

Millie, two people from whom I expected nothing, but received a lot.

Next week, I will tell you about another unexpected “pay back” from a man whom I had helped in his early career, without a selfish thought. 

Life’s real problems. Not those petty things I just covered:

``                      If you ate both pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?

                        Why aren’t  hemorrhoids called asteroids?

                        If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? 

The "Buzz Cut" is absolutely sensational.  Loved it!
 Hope you're hunting for a publisher and getting this
 stuff in shape for a book. The world NEEDS this book…Claude Hall.