In 1960, I was poised to go to the most prestigious radio station in the country, WNEW in New York.  They had sent a telegram praising me to the skies based on having heard me doing mornings on WADO while in New York City. Management does not usually show their hand in such an open manner. There was no conditional language here. They wanted me.  

I hit the crunch. WNEW wanted me, but my then-wife didn’t want to go.

She had been miserable in New York while I was at WADO.

To me, going to WNEW was Nirvana.

To her, it was more getting up at four in the morning in a city she hated.

She said I could go if I wanted to, but not with her.  

Buckling under to her, I didn’t go to New York.

She booted me, anyway.  

I was  desolate, alone…for about two weeks Then, things started happening. Word got around that I had been the droppee, not the dropper.

If you don’t think that women are dynamite, try to drop one, but….if you are the one who is dropped, women flock to your side. I had not realized that there were so many altruistic females whose goal was to fill the aching void in a droppee’s life.

How could I have known?  My ex was 20 and I was a 23 year old Galveston boy when we married. That may over-simplify it, but not by much. 

Six months into my splendid isolation, I was waiting to have lunch at the U.S. Grant Hotel when I spied a dazzling creature across the lobby, about to step into the elevator. I got just a fleeting look at her cameo profile, topped by long golden wavy hair, An incredible physical presence, borne on legs with sculpted calves that tapered into a pair of thoroughbred fetlocks: all this in a fleeting glance. The male brain can do this. freeze-frame a truly magnificent looking woman, after only a glimpse.

I ran in shameless pursuit to the elevator door which was closed in my face by a mischievous poltergeist. Undaunted, I watched the overhead arrow rotate to the second floor, then stop. I scampered up the stairs to a coven of small business offices. There she was, behind a desk, facing an open door.  

Her face straight on was everything I had fantasized.. She gazed at me, unblinking, through glistening hazel eyes, in cool appraisal.

Then she smiled, revealing gleaming white teeth years before commercial whitening was invented .

“Hi there,” I projected in my best selling tones. “I’m Happy Hare.” 

She didn’t miss a beat. “I’m new in town,” she said warmly. ”What’s that?”  

At our first lunch together, I told her shamelessly who Happy Hare was: a morning radio man of some repute..

 “Really?” She said, “What time do you get up?”

 “Four o’clock in the morning,” I said tentatively.

 “No kidding,” she said. ”Me, too.”  

She asked about my interests and I told her that I was a news junkie. She looked at me solemnly and said, “Did you hear? Walter Ulbricht died yesterday” Yes I did, but I thought I was the only one in town who knew that Walter Ulbrecht was the Chancellor of East Germany, much less dead. 

Last month marked out 39^th anniversary. 

April 8^th, was Specs Howard’s birthday. My seven years with him were the richest, most fulfilling years of my professional career. We were together at KYW, later WKYC in Cleveland, then to WXYZ in Detroit……from ’61 through ’67.

When we went our separate ways, Specs remained in Detroit and established the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts. He has since graduated tens of thousands of students in all disciplines of those arts, who have fanned out to every corner of the earth.

His family celebrated a birthday party for him that beat all I have ever seen. It was held at his school, a large elegant dark red brick building on W 9 Mile Road.

The party was disguised as a school affair with his students singing “Happy Birthday,” but then he was led into a large room where the family party was held. His son, Jonathan devised a “This Is Your Life” format.  

Joe Bacarrella, our WXYZ PD, later PD at WJR spoke affectionately of his greatness, both personal and professional. Dick Purtan was another back stage voice who burst into the room after an accolade for Specs.

His wife Ceil, sons, daughters, and their children entered en masse filling the room with love for Specs, their dad, grand dad and great grand dad. The Green Room had been jammed one minute, then empty the next when they left me to greet him.

All I can say is that since I saw him thirty years ago, there was a whole lotta  begattin’ goin’ on, Old Testament style.

When I came on, I kidded him about his age. How old is he? His Social Security Number is 1 1 1 1 1. I also told him he was more talented than I, and that I had come clear across the country to tell him that I……… hated him for it.

I will probably write a book about our improbable relationship. He  a devout Orthodox Jew. so devout that he passed over on the chance to go with me to Akron to be inducted into the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame of Ohio. The 8^th of October, the date of the event, is within the bounds of the Jewish High Holy Days this year and he could  not go.

We made quite a team. He as Jewish as one can be without actually being Moses, and me whose beliefs are  a collage of superstition, Chinese fortune cookies, and astrology, all tempered with an unshakeable faith that there is such a thing as Divine Intervention. I firmly believe in that phenomenon. A giant hand has reached down, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and deposited me on safe ground a number of times when my own personal resources collapsed.

Specs is the embodiment of faith, yet he is the most down to earth, unaffected man I know. I have stopped saying, “Is the Pope Catholic?” when the need arises to express an obvious truth. Instead, if I am around people who know him, I say, “Is Specs Jewish?” 

About another party guest, Dick Purtan: The legendary morning giant on Oldies 104.3 WOMC Detroit.

April 25^th, the NAB inducted him into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame in Las Vegas at the NAB2006 Radio Luncheon. He has been a winner for 40 years, both as one of the  truly great morning hosts, and as a dynamic fund raiser for such causes as the Salvation Army’s Bed and Bread program for which he has raised around 12 million dollars in the past years.

The NAB Hall of Fame is only one of many prestigious awards garnered by Dick. In 1993, the Detroit News proclaimed him “The Michiganian of the Year.”

I have long admired him for his seemingly effortless ability to not only be funny but sincerely engaged in serious causes, a tough combination to pull off.

One of his most memorable bits was to get on the phone with a Detroit cop and subtly steer him into a business exchange with Dick telling him that he had “the money” and where was he to leave it?  The cop didn’t know that he was on the air much less with a crafty morning man. He spouted off instructions about where to leave “the money”.

Dick conspiratorially repeated the instructions and kept him going until the guy hanged himself publicly as a dirty cop. This couldn’t happen today. Under the law you have to inform someone that they are being recorded…geez! 

Melanie, my daughter, helped plan the road tours of major rock artists, including Queen before she married Patrick. Now, she handles the personal business in Los Angeles of Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen. My eight year old grand daughter, Jenna Patch, has developed a friendship with Brian..

A month or so ago, Brian and Roger gave Mel a dozen prime tickets to pass out to family members so we could all go see them in concert in San Diego. That evening at Cox Arena, Mel took Jenna Patch backstage before the concert to greet her buddy, Brian.

I have pictures of him playing guitar games with her when she was four. He would make a moo sound on his guitar and say “Which animal is that?” She would say, “A cow.” Then he would meow and roar and make other animal sounds on his guitar, and Jenna would name the animal. One of those sessions was in London a few years ago, around the time of Her Majesty’s birthday..

On that festive occasion, he took his guitar to the roof of Buckingham Palace and conducted the London Philharmonic and a million Brits in a stirring chorus of “God Save the Queen” The throng filled every square inch from the gates of Buckingham down the Mall to Trafalgar Square. The Royals had personally chosen him for this honor.

            That night in San Diego, Brian came out for a 15 minute solo turn. He  materialized ghostlike out of  a thick cloud of stage fog, stood at center stage, and began fingering complex chords, many of which I had never heard nor imagined.

He is regarded as the world’s greatest rock guitarist. It isn’t just his intricate rock prowess, in which his fingers seem to be unfettered by his hands, but also a style bordering on the classical, like Andres Segovia if he had played rock. One of the pieces sounded like Vivaldi on speed.

Jenna was transfixed. She has an inherent love for music, and listened, absorbed, as he played. Most of his music was melodic and rhythmic but then, he shocked her by abruptly overloading his amp a la Jimi Hendrix, and kicking out the jams. The fortissimo cacophony of guitar screeches catapulted the capacity 12,000 fans out of their seats, sending them into a frenzy, all but Jenna Patch. 

She had never heard him play hard rock.

She looked up at her mother in wide-eyed concern, and shouted into her ear,

            “Is Brian’s guitar broken?”