Word: harvey
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...Born before the first commercial radio stations went on the air, Harvey fashioned a personality and career that spanned the medium's Golden Age, its postwar retreat into a pop jukebox and its later resurgence as the place for news and talk - exactly what Harvey did for more than 75 years. He spoke with clarion clarity, his voice an elocution teacher's pride, easily parodied but intimate, powerful and oh-so-precise. It was "nee-ews," never the lazy "nooze," and "reck-ord," not "reckerd." For emphasis, he'd add a vowel to a word with abutting consonants...
...Paul Harvey Aurandt was born in Tulsa, Okla., in 1918; his father was shot and killed by robbers when Paul was 3. As a kid, he built a radio set to receive distant magic signals, and in high school, a teacher nudged him into a radio booth at local station KVOO. Jobs in Salina, Kans., Oklahoma City and Honolulu followed just before Pearl Harbor brought him to Chicago in 1944. He stayed there, hosting a Jobs for G.I. Joe program, adding his signature phrase "the rest of the story" the following year. He got his own show, on WENR, with...
...salesman for himself and his vision of the American dream, he was also a master peddler of many products, whose makers were as loyal to Harvey as his listeners were. A skit from the 1984-85 season of Saturday Night Live had Harvey (played by Rich Hall) compulsively peppering his news items with sponsor names. The man remained unapologetic. "Some days," he told Larry King in 1988, "the best news in the broadcast is the commercial. You can keep your natural teeth all your natural life! There is a glove that doesn't wear out! There is a car battery...
...last years, Harvey's resonance wavered a bit; an occasional vocal crack gave a whimsical tone to the music of his script. But his métier never changed. It remained a mix of headlines, mild fulminations ("Americans, do not protest bone-marrow stem-cell transplants") and lighter-side anecdotes. "Doctors have removed a kidney stone the size of a coconut," he said in late January, adding with a little startle, "seven inches-a across!" He could tut-tut with a smile: "Have you noticed," he asked just before this year's Super Bowl, "some players with hair that sticks...
...skeptical and gullible alike, that minor industries sprang up around him. A book version of The Rest of the Story, first published in 1977, hit its 18th printing in four years. And on the Internet, you'll find 65,000 links to what is known as the Paul Harvey riddle: "What is greater than God, more evil than the devil? The poor have it, the rich don't need it. And if you eat it, you'll die." There is no evidence that Harvey ever read this on the air, but it's just the kind of whimsical poser that...