Happy Hare said it.  "Be careful what you don't ask for -- You may get it anyway"

Specs Howard, my morning buddy, and I eagerly anticipated football great Jim Brown's appearance on our KYW morning radio show as Chairman of the Cancer Society Drive.. One of my best friends, Dick Schaffrath, then the Browns' all-pro left tackle, had suggested us to Jim. Dick was one of the few people in tbe world whom Jim trusted. Why Not? He was the man who cleared the path for Brown, often taking out three tacklers at a play, .enabling him to make those legendary Browns' sweep end runs.. That interview wound up fraught with farce and sated with satire.

His appearance was set up with the one proviso: that we not ask Jim any sports questions. Damn! .....Ok Fine, we said, and the interview droned on with the predictable Q and A. In no time at all, Specs and I were in an alpha state when Jim said, "I wlll be taking a more active part in community service when I retire next year," .. He slipped this exclusive scoop in so seamlessly that we did not pick up on it. We finished the interview, thanked him and went on with the regular show totally unconscious of the bombshell he had dropped on the sports world. No one even suspected that Jim was going to retire any time soon. He was at the peak of his powers.

After the show, we returned to our office to find a platoon of our own KYW radio and television reporters firing volleys of questions at us about Brown's retirement. announcement. To us, what Brown said was a throwaway line, not an announcement. but General Manager Perry Bascomb changed our perspective by rushing in and shouting, "The New York Times is on the line about Jim Brown's retirement!"

I picked up the phone to hear a voice so angry he sounded strangled.. "I'm Red Smith, the Sports Editor of the New York Times," He rasped. . "What's this I hear about Jim Brown retiring?." Without waiting for our reply, he stormed on. "I need a tape of that f...ing interview." "No problem," I replied.

Smith ranted, "Why the f... didn't he make that announcement in my column instead of on a podunk Cleveland radio program?" Actually, he had a point which I was not willing to concede under the circumstance.. Specs and I fielded indignant calls from major sports writers all over the country.

Our own KYW reporters crammed into our little office in a spirited scrum to be the first in line.. It didn't matter to them that Brown's "announcement" was a simple dependent clause that would be missed if you sneezed. The local reporters were courteous but I could tell what they were thinking: that two local morning idiots got even a sniff of such a momentous story was an affront to their art...

The most imposing sports editors in the country processed the story into large black headlines the following morning managing to avoid plugging either Martin and Howard or KYW.

A week before I left for Detroit, Dick Schaffrath and I met for lunch. It was our custom to see each other on Mondays after the games. He was usually banged up after a game and it was fun to be used as a human walker helping Dick up and down curbs as we walked toward lunch..

Ours had evolved into a small talk relationship, but I brought up the subject of Jim Brown and why, indeed, he had used our show instead of...say...the New York Times...to make his announcement.

Dick replied, "I steered him toward your show just to help you guys, but Jim probably had another reason.. He did not respect sports writers, Jim wanted to let them know that he could use a Cleveland non-sports radio show to announce his retirement instead of making the big announcement at a national news conference and still create a big impact. He was right. The sports writers came groveling to you and Specs begging for a handout, and this was what he was after, to let them know that he didn't need them.

Dick was elected to the Ohio State Senate a few years later.

KYW wasn't podunk. We covered the entire MIdwest with 14 million potential listeners. Specs and I had listeners in the Bahamas, The TV operation boasted an army of award-winning reporters, and entertainers and was the hub of the Mike Douglas Show. a nationally syndicated TV show that ran Monday through Friday with an unlimited budget..

Woody Frazier, the producer of the Douglas Show, made it a practice to warehouse his special guests in our radio studio if they arrived to be on the Douglas Show on Monday mornings before the building opened. Many took the red eye and wound on our sidewalk at 7:00 am, too late to go the hotel for a change or a nap. It was my duty to watch for them and scoop them up.. They were major stars I could drop some names on you and break your back.

Our show took a fifteen minute news break at 7am featuring Bill Tomkins an Edward R Murrow sound-alike. When Bill began his Monday morning news. I would walk to our third floor window and scan the streets below. One morning , I caught Bob Hope standing in front trying to will the door to open. The night watchman had been alerted to this bizarre practice and he went to the entrance with me to let Mr. Hope in.

The standing rule from Woody was that we would not ask his guests to be on our show but would let them make themselves at home on our couch with a hot drink and doughnuts rest until a Douglas staff member came to gather them up, usually around 8am. The greatest entertainers in the country were putty in our hands when they came in during sub-zerio weather and we handed them a couple of blankets.

Forget about it with Bob. He wanted "on", despite an all-night trip on the red eye..What did we talk about? Everything. He was bright and funny and very Bob Hope. He began telling us about his latest trip to Viet Nam with a large stellar USO troupe., "Wow!" I said reflexively "I wish I could go on one of the trips." "Really?" said Bob "Hand me the phone." We had an on-air phone already plugged in and within a minute, he was connected with the Pentagon. I can still hear that lilting Bob Hope voice, "Hi darling, Put Rosie on the phone, will ya.." General Rosie O'Donnell, the head of the USO tours, dropped everything for Bob. "Hello Rosie? Bob. Listen, Rosie, I'm here in Cleveland with a morning radio guy named Harry Martin. Fix him up with a tour, will you? Make it a sports tour. He seems to be a sports kind of guy. Thanks, Rosie" That was it. Next? Specs could have gone ,but he thought I was crazy.

Within a week I was "fixed up" with a USO sports tour comprised of five all-pro football players and Edie Adams the gorgeous blonde Vegas class entertainer, We would skim over the jungle in a chopper and land at a camp where I would set up the P.A., tell a few gags, bring on the guys, and finally dazzle them with Edie...

Re-enter Dick Schaffrath. He got me Johnny Unitas, GIno Marcchetti, Forrest Gregg, Gary Collins and, of course, himself. The show was "set" in my mind. I wrote a few gags, Edie Adams was...well.....Edie Adams and I had no concerns about the players ' connecting with the guys. I was over-trained, barely able to wait the few days when we would leave for the adventure of our lives in the jungles of Viet Nam..

Nobody told the North Vietnamese to hold off for us. They flooded South Vietnam with ravaging troops. It was called the Tet offensive, an attack of such magnitude that they penetrated all the way to Saigon.. It was an invasion so stunning that the battle lines vanished. Our first tour stop was to have been Hue. the only city on our tour, which was engulfed in savage fighting.

General O'Donnell wasted no time to get to me on the phone and cancel the tour. "Do you think this is a flash in the pan?" I asked. "Can we go back in a few weeks?" He gave me a gallows laugh. "Son," he said, "This is the beginning of the end."

Harold Greene, the Los Angeles TV anchor lives next door to the Hope home. in Toluca Lake. He told me that in his last days Bob did not recognize him, his neighbor of many years, as they passed coming and going from their homes. Harold said that ,even so, he would often hear Bob singing to himself in a sweet soft voice, "Thanks for the Memory." as they lifted him into his limousine.

No Bob, Thank YOU..