Good Day!: The Paul Harvey Story
Paul J. Batura, with a foreword by Mike Huckabee
(Regnery Books, 291 pages, $27.95)
Almost everyone who hears the name Paul Harvey thinks of one of
his most famous lines, said with a pause and crackly voice: “And
now you know the ressst of the story!” Turns out,
the rest of Paul Harvey’s story — told now in Paul J. Batura’s
first comprehensive portrait of the Norman Vincent Peale of radio
— has more to it than a five-minute narrative.
Batura’s timing and tone suggest a eulogy in book form. Harvey
died in February at 90 and from page one, Good Day! paints
Harvey as a patriotic American brimming with optimism. Unlike the
lives of media personalities today which buzz with drama and
controversy, Harvey’s story forms a pleasant arc — from rags to
riches with few detours into sorrow, until the end.
Though Harvey spent his boyhood battling the Great Depression
and plagued by the loss of his father, troublesome times in Tulsa,
Oklahoma never led to a troubled spirit. Recollections of his first
kiss from a teacher, catching Saturday matinees with his friends,
and eating at Ike’s chili parlor seem like they’re from a Norman
Rockwell painting. The radio made an early appearance in Harvey’s
life and the curious, ambitious boy not only built and sold his own
crystal radios, but preferred to listen to the Lowell Thomas
and the News daily feature while his friends played baseball
outside.
Still, none of the radio personalities Harvey soaked up during
childhood were as influential as his high school speech and drama
teacher, Isabelle Ronan, who spotted Harvey’s talent for radio. She
marched him to the station studios of KVOO, declaring, “This boy
needs to be in radio!” The producers agreed. It was during his
first stint at KVOO that Harvey — even as a sixteen-year-old
—developed his “distinctive voice and crisp elocution, along with
his dramatic use of the pause.” Despite being taken off on-air
announcing assignments until his teenage acne cleared up (he
covered events with live audiences), Harvey learned he loved radio
and radio loved him.
After graduation, he bounced from radio station to radio station
around the Midwest — wherever he could land a job — broadcasting
news, developing his trademarks, and sharpening his journalism
skills. This included developing “man on the street” interviews
that endeared him to his listeners and separated him from other
broadcasters.
Harvey even met his wife, Evelyn “Angel” Cooper at a radio
station. With her imaginative talents as a writer and editor, the
two became a powerful productive team, his “creative and
administrative heartbeat,” that remained strong until her death. It
was Angel who recognized Harvey’s on-air talent and thought they
should move to Chicago so he could try and make it in the “big
time” as a network news commentator. He balked. She persisted. They
lived there 64 years; his career would never be the same.
During his first permanent gig at a new station that had been
recently renamed ABC, Paul Harvey News was launched as a
fifteen-minute, six-days a week news program. Though producers
thought the 10:00 P.M. timeslot seemed too late, the Harveys —
particularly Angel — persuaded them it was the time Americans were
getting their news. It was another career move.
Many times while reading this easy, poignant biography, you can
hear Harvey’s voice, booming and melodious, optimistic and
satisfying. Nevertheless, there are places the narrative gives way
to bubbly clichés. From boyhood to adulthood, his life seems so
buoyant the chapters unfolding his success become predictable.
Where’s the rest of the story?
The story of Harvey’s political views is well known. More
conservative than liberal and more pro-American than partisan,
Harvey was outspoken about every major news event from the Vietnam
War to post-9/11 understanding of Islam. Described by Batura as a
student of the Founding Fathers, Harvey “embraced capitalism and
despised anything remotely associated with socialistic policies.”
Listeners always got two for the price of one: the reported news
event and Harvey’s patriotic commentary take on it. As with many
talk radio hosts who mirror Harvey in some form, this only added to
his appeal.
It was Harvey’s love of history that spawned his most famous
radio creation, what listeners know as the Rest of the
Story. Harvey thought “history cheats the history student by
telling him the end of the story from the beginning” and the
riveting blurbs about famous historical events or people changed
that. Even Paul and Angel’s only son, Paul Jr., got in on the act.
Though a musician for much of his life, he helped write many of the
stories, continued with the family enterprise as his parents failed
in health, and was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award in
2004 for one of the moving stories.
Though Batura originally intended to write a biography
specifically about Harvey’s faith, he only devotes one chapter to
Harvey’s religious life., Nevertheless, it’s evident that
throughout his life, especially as an older man, Harvey valued his
Christian faith. His commitment deepened after his baptism in his
fifties and was reflected in his lifestyle.
Despite the fact that Batura’s book portrays a life constantly
on the upswing, almost too good to be true, it’s easy to see why
given the man’s successful career and strong faith. Maybe that is
the rest of the story.
