The Paul Harvey Story

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And the American people. Up next, the story of a truly iconic name in American broadcasting. And a personal hero of mine. And we're talking about Paul Harvey. Here to tell the story is Steven Mansfield, author of Paul Harvey's America. Now let's get into it as Paul Harvey would say.

The rest of the story. The breadth of the history that he interacted with is one of the pillars of greatness of Paul Harvey's life. He's born in 1918. That's the year World War I ended.

He doesn't die until 2009 at the age of 90. Think about the fact that he was on the air almost every day from 1945 until the end of his life. He would have talked about, and this was a major part of his rise, would have talked about the returning GIs and their need to get jobs. He would have talked about the rise of communism and the Whitaker Chambers case. During the Vietnam era, he would have commented daily on the My Lai massacre, on the Vietnam War, on every presidential campaign. He was on the air and gave beautiful monologues around the time of the Kennedy assassination with riots, with the rise of the civil rights movement, and certainly with Watergate. He was commenting every day, comforting the country, chastising the evildoers every single day for almost 70 years of American history in a time of great change and upheaval. Paul Harvey is commenting on everything from technology to politics to trends to religious themes.

And again, think about this every single day. This was just what people looked Paul Harvey to do. And he was opinionated, just like the old man sitting in the town square giving his opinions and whittling and smoking his pipe. You know, he wasn't big on hippies. He was a conservative.

So he used language like hippies and long hairs and beatniks, what have you. But people looked to him for that. He really was, many people said, the soul of America on the air. But you have to understand his roots in order to understand the impact he was attempting to have upon the American people. Paul Harvey's upbringing is really a typical small town America, even though he lived in Tulsa, which we now think of as a bigger, prosperous city, but at that time still had dirt streets.

And Oklahoma had only been a state about a decade. He lived close to the earth. There were Native Americans walking the streets of Tulsa as Paul Harvey grew up. He lived in a rural farm, oil, petroleum world that was about grit and about your muscle and about your immediate life. And he listened to the older ones as they talked about the things of life.

And it was love and marriage and what's being served for dinner and, you know, when mother died and all those kinds of good, rural, almost southern type stories. And he found all of them to be of significance. They reflected character. They reflected values. They reflected nobility.

They reflected the tragedies and the sadnesses of life. He didn't find meaning only in what the queen was doing that day. And Paul Harvey was a man deeply affected by the Christian faith, grew up in it, stayed in it all of his life.

One of the things he was known for, which was very unusual in his time, is that he often quoted scripture. Now, he didn't do it in a preachy way. He didn't do it heading towards an offering or after a hymn, but he did it in such a way as to apply Christian truth and the nobility of the King James Bible to our society. And it didn't sound weird.

It didn't sound hackneyed. It didn't sound like an overreach when he did it. So he was a man of faith. He spoke about his faith.

He spoke about praying for people openly and talked about churches like they were just part of life at a time when, especially when you hit the 60s, we're in a counterculture here, we're in a decline of Christian influence to some degree, the Christian faith is being attacked. He didn't buy into it. But he was born on September 4th, 1918. Again, that was the year that World War I ended.

In fact, Armistice Day was just another month or two after he was born that year. His father was a policeman. His mother was a homemaker.

Good people, literate, deeply moral, committed to church. So he would have lived in the home of a law enforcement officer. He would have lived in the home of people who talked about the world around the table.

But there was a tragedy that occurred early in Paul's life that really, I think, shaped everything he did afterwards. Exactly a week before Christmas in 1921, his father, a policeman, after finishing his day of service, went rabbit hunting with a friend. Later in the evening, it was cold. As they were coming back from the hunt, they saw a car pulled off to the side of a country road. They assumed it was in trouble, that it had broken down, that somebody was in need on that cold Tulsa night. And so these two men pulled over to see what was needed.

As soon as they pulled up, even with the car, they saw that there were four men in it. The windows came down and shotguns came out of the windows. These were criminals.

These were men who had just been robbing people. And those shotguns fired into Officer Arendt's car. That was Paul Harvey's original last name, Arendt. And Paul Harvey's father was mortally wounded.

He didn't die for another 48 hours, but he did die and have pretty ghastly wounds. Well, Paul was only three, but he, without question, was of course impacted by this death, the grief that filled the house. This was at a time when the community would have pulled together, not just because Paul's father was a policeman, but also because he was so respected in his part of Tulsa. So Paul Harvey grew up with this legendary father, murdered by the side of the road a week before Christmas. And one of the reasons I think he was able to get in touch with the dark side, the pain, the tragedy of life is that he spent Christmases, and especially that first Christmas when he was three, with an empty house, so to speak, a father missing, a mother in tears.

Everything in his youth was diminished by the tragic and needless cruel murder of his father. And you're listening to Steven Mansfield tell the story of Paul Harvey and what a story he's telling. 70 years as a kind of voice and soul of America. One man, one typewriter, one microphone, speaking into just about every triumphant tragedy in our nation's history in the 20th century, or at least most of it. When we come back, more of this remarkable story filled with personal tragedy, as you just heard here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people, and we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show without you.

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That's OurAmericanStories.com. Hey, this is Lance Bass from Frosted Tips. So my husband Michael and I just took an amazing road trip to the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Vegas, and thanks to Hyundai, we were able to record a special episode just for you guys along the way. We're so excited to take you on this journey with us. You're not going to want to miss this one, right, babe?

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Requires credit qualification and 36-month phone financing agreement. And we continue with our American stories and the story of broadcast legend, Paul Harvey. When we last left off, Paul Harvey's father, a police officer in Tulsa, had been shot and killed a week before Christmas when Harvey was three years old. Let's continue with this story. Here again is Steven Mansfield. I think that young boys who lose their fathers search the pages of history for father figures.

This is, psychologists tell us this is true. This may have fed into why Paul Harvey was such a student of history, later did the rest of the story broadcast, talking about American heroes and telling tales of nobility that people did not know. A fatherless boy found perhaps in the nation and its leaders and its fathers and its great heroes a bit of father figures that filled his soul. And so he would speak of a Lincoln or he would speak of a Thomas Alva Edison or he would speak of a George Washington, almost as though he was a father figure to young Paul Harvey.

And I think also it's what sent him to literature, it's what made him love words, it's what made him love communicating. He was building in his life community and fatherhood and connection that wasn't there as naturally as it might have been had his father lived and made him a man given to a bit of hero worship, he respected those in uniform, he respected those who fought for the nation. Paul did become through his career really a voice for law enforcement. A policeman is a composite of what all men are, I guess, a mingling of saint and sinner, dust and deity, called statistics, wave the fan over stinkers, underscore instances of dishonesty and brutality because they are news.

What that really means is that they are exceptional, they are unusual, they are not commonplace, buried under the froth is the fact. Now it's interesting, he wasn't blind, he knew there were people of low character in uniform, he knew there were people who abused their office, their position, their power, the trust, and he spoke about that often. This is one of the myths about him, he wasn't just blindly pro-military, blindly pro-police, he knew that people of low character could occupy those uniforms and those positions and he castigated them in his broadcast.

The fact is that less than one-half of one percent of policemen misfit that uniform and that is a better average than you'd find among clergymen. He was, while other news broadcasters were trying to be objective and maybe trying to build audiences by talking about the negatives, he didn't hesitate to advocate. He would describe the life of a policeman, he would describe the sacrifice, he would describe the low pay, he would describe the dangers and law enforcement revered him, not just because he was their advocate but he brought understanding of their lives to the American people at a time when there were some calling policemen pigs and gunning for them, assassinating them. What is a policeman? He of all men is at once the most needed and the most wanted.

A strangely nameless creature who is served to his face and pig or worse behind his back. He must be such a diplomat that he can settle differences between individuals so that each will think he won but if a policeman is neat he's conceited, if he's careless he's a bum, if he's pleasant he's a flirt, if he's not he's a grouch. He must make instant decisions which would require months for a lawyer but if he hurries he's careless, if he's deliberate he's lazy, he must be first to an accident, infallible with a diagnosis, he must be able to start breathing, stop bleeding, tie splints and above all be sure the victim goes home without a limp or expect to be sued. The police officer must know every gun, draw on the run and hit where it doesn't hurt. He must be able to whip two men twice his size and half his age without damaging his uniform and without being brutal.

If you hit him he's a coward, if he hits you he's a bully. A policeman must know everything and not tell. He must know where all of the sin is and not partake. He would describe the sacrifice, he would describe the low pay, he would describe the dangers and of course he knew this because he had them recounted to him constantly.

By his mother though he couldn't have known much about his father from first-hand contact. If I were the devil. If I were the devil.

If I were the prince of darkness I'd want to engulf the whole world in darkness and I'd have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population but I wouldn't be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, thee. The Tulsa race riot of 1921 is profound in Paul Harvey's thinking and it shapes him in a couple of different ways. First of all let's just remember that the Tulsa race riot was a horrible moment. Black Wall Street was completely wiped out in Tulsa.

This was one of the most successful black communities in the country. It had all begun because a girl on an elevator accused a black young man of molesting her. That's largely been proven untrue since and so a riot broke out. Many, many were killed. It may have been as much as 3,000 African-Americans were killed. We don't know for sure and by the way it's one of the few times that bombs were dropped from airplanes on American civilians. We now know that whites who owned planes went up in those planes and dropped flaming tar balls onto the black community.

It was horrible. Now Paul Harvey was only three when this happened but he grew up in the wake of it and yet it was woven into his understanding and his worldview at the same time as a love for America was being woven into his soul. This created one of his gifts which was an ability to see the deformities and the warts on the American soul as being just that.

A good country, a country well-intentioned, a country with high ideals and yet one in which communities, people, sometimes people in uniform, certainly people in high office could fall far below the high call as he called it, could live beneath their values, could live beneath their founding principles and this I think became a guide for Americans. You know when the news is filled all with bad things even just for an evening, Americans can conclude you know our country's falling apart, it's an experiment that didn't work but Paul Harvey would say wait a minute now we've done these things, we've done these good things, let's remember who we are, let's remember our great stories, let's remember our high founding values and just because some racists do dastardly things in Tulsa in 1921 doesn't mean that America is abolished or America is a lie or that this ought to be, this is something that's going to pervade the country and that perspective was unique at a time when you had the rise of American media, you had tightly competitive journalism and reporters often went to the dark side, they often reported the bad news first you know if it bleeds it leads kind of attitude and as a result there was a flood of negative about America, about Americans, about what was going on in the world so all of this shaped him profoundly and when you set all of that into a still rural Tulsa's kind of context you really start to come close to understanding Paul Harvey. If we're going to look at Paul Harvey as sort of a motivational story for the young we need to know that he essentially was taken to his first job in radio by a school teacher, there was a school teacher who heard him speak, liked him, liked the timbre of his voice, liked his passion and his zeal and so as an early teenager Paul went and served at a radio station there in Tulsa basically cleaning up, basically sweeping, working nights, working without pay by the way but she had said to him I think you may have a career in broadcasting, get close to it, get in the culture, understand it, study it so he began working at KVOO first just as an unpaid 14 year old janitor. And you've been listening to Steven Mansfield tell one heck of a story and periodically we hear from Harvey himself and that combination of triumphalism and tragedy deeply born out of his experience with tragedy and triumph it infuses everything and he has that rare sensitivity to understand the wounds of life and the grief of life but that otherworldly part of him that rises above it and finds the hope and the love this internal paradox indeed is what made Harvey special. The story of Paul Harvey continues here on Our American Stories. What are the funniest moments for us on the podcast so far? Oh my gosh I want to jump in right now and say for me I've had a couple but Danielle being so adamant that it was it was Mark Paul Gossler yeah when it was actually James Van Der Beek because you can't script stuff like that it was so perfect that was great that that is one of my favorite moments and it was just set up perfectly because I had already like asked him the question you had already laid the foundation and and he and he said it's James Van Der Beek and I remember thinking when he said James Van Der Beek I remember thinking I don't think they look that way. This episode is brought to you by the all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6.

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Requires credit qualification and 36-month phone financing agreement. And we continue with our American stories and the story of Paul Harvey. When we last left off Paul Harvey had started his career in broadcasting on the advice of a teacher sweeping floors at a local radio station in Tulsa Oklahoma. Let's continue with this story here again is Stephen Mansfield author of Paul Harvey's America.

So he began working at KVOO first just as a unpaid 14-year-old janitor and in time he began to learn the lore they began to let him read commercials and do the news from time to time just emulating what he'd already heard but he was beginning to rise he was beginning to use his gifts they even let him write a few stories about some things that he knew a bit more about than the other reporters and so by being willing to serve being willing to work hard being willing to work after hours late into the night he began to master the culture of radio and eventually master his craft. American's preachers tell me that there is no sermon which is looked forward to with less enthusiasm than a sermon about sin. Well that's probably true if we're talking about a secular sermon on the subject of hard work. There is no gospel less popular than the gospel of hard work. The pregnant skyline of America was set in place one brick at a time.

Now that represents a lot of calluses. America the beautiful is not an accomplished fact guaranteed to remain intact. God shed his grace on thee to be sure but this was wasteland when God had it to himself he handed man a hoe and said you want another Eden all right earn it. I personally have always taken that as a great inspiration story because sometimes I know certainly my life I might not have been willing at the age of 14 or 15 just to simply to serve in a business or around a culture that I would want to learn but I think Paul Harvey had a sense that if he if he got in there and he worked and he listened and he learned and he stayed alert that the predictions of his teacher Isabel Ronan who had sent him to this job actually taken him to this first radio job would come true that one day he could rise and do significant things in broadcasting but I think that we need to remember is all because of a public school teacher and a boy who was willing to serve in an unpaid role. Well Paul Harvey graduates from high school goes to the University of Tulsa for a short while but he does not graduate from the University of Tulsa. Radio is just calling he he said often that he fell in love with words and ran off with the radio that's very much the way it was in his life so he began to work at other radio stations.

Hello there this is Jane Whitman. KVOO was a station that was of course based in Tulsa and it was one of Paul Harvey's first jobs and what's fascinating about this particular station is that there was a valuing of their local context there was a valuing of their local culture they would report local news have local commentary they didn't just bring the news from the east they didn't just parody or repeat blindly what came out of New York. In fact a story from Paul Harvey's life a little bit later will help in illustrating this later in Paul Harvey's broadcast life he was clearly emulating the broadcasters from the east that he knew eastern reporters and a station manager came to him and said look as long as you're emulating everybody else you'll always be only second best the only way you can be the best is by being yourself well that transformed Paul Harvey's broadcast that transformed his style and he had a sister-in-law who was a farm wife and he her name was Betty and so during his career he had decided to measure everything he broadcasted according to the Betty test the question was would this mean something to Betty would it impact her would it be of interest to her would it ennoble her in some way and so he constantly thought about his sister-in-law Betty who was a Missouri farm wife. Well I think that that helped him not only have respect for his audience high and low wherever they were in America and around the world but also to frame his comments in a way they would appreciate he would drain out technical language he would drain out the political arcania of what was happening in Washington DC and he would just speak in the way you would to a Missouri farm wife if you ran onto her at the local store that appealed to people they were living in a complex world they were living in an increasingly bureaucratic world knowledge was increasing rapidly media was bringing everything in the universe right to their door but Paul Harvey spoke in simple moral accurate terms that also filtered out what wouldn't be interesting to Betty he genuinely found interest in the common he thought that what was going on with Farmer Jones in Iowa was important the moral decision that Farmer Jones had made the barbershop quartet he had started the way he tried new crops sometimes he would go dark and say Farmer Jones is a farmer no more and he would describe what shut down the family farm in Iowa for the Jones family in other words he didn't just infuse the common with meaning he recognized it and drew it out so it didn't sound strange that he was moving from a description of a boy raising a deer in Missouri and then switch over to a report about Watergate somehow they seemed significant to the human spirit they seem significant to America it all seemed of a piece and he did that masterfully so picture it now you've got the Betty's his sister-in-law in Missouri a farm wife hearing about complex matters in London in very simple terms but then you've also got the President of the United States hearing about the boy raising the deer on his farm it fed a new culture a new understanding of the world into people who didn't daily live in those contexts and I that's exactly how it impacted me I really honor Paul Harvey for that he brought the world you weren't in to your world and brought something of your world to those who didn't know your world and that that was a master master stroke on his part but I think that was a reflection of the culture of KVOO and some other stations owned by that same network and the group of affiliates because they believed that they would have a greater impact build a good audience if they were most authentic that their power came from being authentic and according to their culture and not just a repeater station for what came from the east this distinguished them and it shaped the career of Paul Harvey a man with one of the most signature styles in American broadcasting but it came about because of this sort of proud fierce Oklahoman Midwest rural we are who we are we're not living on Fifth Avenue in New York and we don't intend to he often said that he couldn't stay in New York for more than 30 days because if he did he would begin to believe that the sun set behind the UN building in other words that the sun rose and set on New York and you're listening to Stephen Mansfield tell one heck of a story what frames Paul Harvey's life is that experience at that station it taught him that culture matters and that it frames a point of view and yet Harvey never excluded big cities he didn't see it as big city versus rural midwestern America but he put and never abandoned that framework forward in everything he did unapologetically not with a chip on his shoulder but out of sheer straightforward pride the story of his midwestern values and where they sprang and by the way the values of this show they sprang from a station called WHO one of our prime stations and one of our most important ones right in Des Moines and I grew up my entire life in northern New Jersey near New York City but had an attraction to rural America that I think sprang from Paul Harvey now that I'm listening to this and from people like Bear Bryant so many of the people whose lives I emulated in and admired came from this part of the country these parts of the country the story of Paul Harvey continues a broadcasting legend here on Our American Stories Hyundai is back with the all-electric IONIQ 6 it has a range of up to 360 miles and can charge from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 18 minutes on a dc ultra fast charger but are there any drawbacks to the ev lifestyle yes there are you can unlock and start this car with a digital key which means you're gonna have to get rid of that giant keychain that holds a special place in your heart you know the one with every key in your life since high school lastly gas station beef jerky I'm talking about the shredded kind oh no wait you can still get that yeah scratch that one the all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 6 when it comes to the minimal drawback electric vehicle lifestyle we're thinking of every mile Hyundai it's your journey 2023 IONIQ 6 is available in limited quantities and at select dealers and select states only contact your Hyundai dealer for availability details epa estimated 361 mile range for IONIQ 6 se long range rwd with fully charged battery actual range varies based on trim and other factors actual charge time varies based on charging unit output temperature and other factors call 5 6 2 3 1 4 4 6 0 3 for complete details hello there this is malcolm globo host of revisionist history ebay motors is here for the ride you saw the potential through some elbow grease fresh installs and a whole lot of love you transformed 100 000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive entirely its own look to your left look to your right no one's got a ride like this there's nothing else that sounds like feels like or looks like the set of wheels in your garage with over 122 million parts for your number one ride or die you can make sure your ride stays running smoothly so there's no limit to how far you can take it brake kits turbochargers engines exhaust kits roof racks led headlights bumpers whatever your baby needs ebay motors has it and with ebay 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visit boostinfinite.com that's boostinfinite.com terms apply after 30 gigabytes service may be slowed receive a comparable iphone model each year with an acceptable trade-in every year requires credit qualification and 36-month phone financing agreement and we continue with our american stories in the final portion of our story on broadcast legend paul harvey when we last left off harvey had developed what he called the betty test which distilled the news for those living in america's heartland rather than the east it was because of this that paul harvey started to rise let's continue with the story here again is stephen mansfield those early days prior to world war ii his rise really certainly is god-given talent but it's working hard it's studying it's it's not assuming that he should be given something he's laboring he's laboring in small stations he's he's studying the craft and doing it on his own he hardly ever went to any course that taught broadcasting he hardly had any formal instruction but he just learned on the job by paying close attention to what worked what the station got cards and letters about what resonated with people and he built his career on that it's interesting that in his career people sometimes forget given that he was such a personality of what an astute and gifted reporter he was he could watch events understand what was happening anticipate what might be coming describe it powerfully in a way that would make you lean into your radio set and stick with you long after and he would stay with some stories as long as they live think about how long he would have been reporting watergate or vietnam and people often said that they understood more of what was going on in vietnam than they did from the you know briefings of generals on the air from the speeches of presidents from the debates in congress and from print media so it was pretty stunning now he leaned conservative in his broadcast and in his politics he was very concerned about communist influence in america he was very concerned quite frankly about left-leaning professors on american university campuses one of the things he became concerned about was lack security at some of our nuclear and atomic facilities at some of our military facilities this really sent him over the edge because he felt like there might be some communist collusion and undermining he felt like people were being lax so in one of the most unusual moments of his life he decided to see if he could break into the argon national laboratory this was not far from his home he had gotten information as often happens with well-known broadcasters people bring them information and leak things to them and he had gotten information that there was lack security there that people were carrying information out things of that nature and as a result he decided with a couple of friends to break in now it's hard to know in retrospect exactly what prompted this only paul got over the fence his friends did not they didn't get over the fence before jeep of security officials began to arrive he was taken into custody the others ran away and paul claimed that he had been advised and was working in league with security forces and law enforcement forces there were probably some truth to that he had probably been encouraged perhaps by some in congress there's no question that some other folks like this knew about what he was planning to do and were encouraging him and the fact that he that he got off with no sentence at all not even a serious hearing means probably he had some people who were maybe sponsors in washington dc but it says a lot about paul harvey that he so cared about the state of his nation and so cared about lack security at some of our secure facilities that he actually climbed a fence and tried to break into one of the most secure and high level national research laboratories in the country it's not something he talked about a great deal later i think he was grateful to get by unscathed but he was trying to do what he considered to be investigative journalism and perhaps make a turn in american history and certainly raise the concern about the influence of communists in our security services that's really where he was going but it's fascinating episode still a bit of a mystery people still praise him and criticize him for it but i think it shows the intensity and the devoted patriotism of paul harvey however misguided this episode might be but once his managers and producers began to realize that he was most powerful when he was commenting from a personal perspective bringing his moral grid to the air slapping the hands of some statesmen encouraging others celebrating the humor and the poetry and the glory of it all that's when he was at his strength paul harvey's numbers were uh stunning at the time and you get different estimates for different seasons but it's not wrong to say that paul harvey would average about 35 million listeners to his paul harvey news and comment now you got to realize that's in america during his heyday that's north of 200 million people we're in the 300 millions now uh so that's 30 million 35 million adults in a nation of arguably the low 200 millions um and these are thinking people these are working people these are people in dc this is this is unbelievably influential and far beyond some of the major evening newscasts and so on that we we would still talk about you know walter kronkite i don't know exactly what his audience was um but i remember him commenting that he was humorously in competition with paul harvey so the influence of those two men walter kronkite and paul harvey was huge he was arguably the most powerful most influential broadcaster of his age a man who in his 80s signs a hundred million dollar contract 10 million a year for 10 years and he was a brilliant businessman and one of the great spokesmen and voices of commercials in american history part of the reason was people knew a couple of things about him first of all he used every product that he pitched he never spoke of a product that he didn't actually use for example i recall from my own listening years that he used a schwin aerodyne bike that was the stationary bike that had a big air wheel at the front of it and he used it and he talked about his average commercial was talking about losing weight and how he liked it and what he did while he wrote it and what time of day he wrote it and how angel sometimes his wife would use it well when you've got the most popular broadcaster in america speaking of things he's used the refrigerator a new way of doing ice cubes what have you that's very influential the other thing is that he wove it into the broadcast almost as though it was part of the broadcast now people knew it was a commercial but he would say so while you called your dad tell him to tune in i'll have this for you on page two page two the such and such refrigerator is just a miracle of our time angel and i use it and he would go right on people knew it was a commercial but it was done in the same paul harvey tones it was personal and he had a lot of respect for his sponsors he used to say i have great respect for those who put their money where my mouth is meaning they fund my show he was known to be unbelievably influential and of course they would do studies to see how he would impact sales of a given product and it was off the charts and so his sponsorships were record-breaking but the reason was he would move from the story of the moose in montana and the funny thing that happened with the hunter and go right into talking about the schwin aerodyne stationary bike and people were just as fascinated with the one as they were with the other and by the way it wasn't always certain that he would be so esteemed remember again he he broke into a lab a secure laboratory facility trying to poke his finger in the eye a little bit of the national government which he considered to be lax he broke from presidents he said resident nixon i love you but you're wrong and it was it was a huge moment in american broadcasting he risked he criticized it wasn't guaranteed he would always be so beloved it wasn't guaranteed that official washington would come to revere him as it did but ultimately he did receive the presidential medal of freedom which is the one of the highest honors a civilian can receive in our country and i think it was well deserved i think he had been the voice of america perhaps even more of a moral influence in america than for example billy graham i can tell you quickly that i listened to paul harvey while when i was a military brat living behind the iron curtain in berlin germany and i would sometimes listen to paul harvey with my german friends so my german friends who spoke england english and they had never heard these things they had they had no idea all of their knowledge about american american history was pretty much distilled through uh you know german media and the german education system and even though germans honored american certainly for their sacrifices in world war ii etc um it wasn't the heartfelt thing that paul harvey brought and i remember looking at those german young friends and being aware that they were falling in love with america like i had through the voice of paul harvey and now you know the rest of the story and a beautiful job on the production editing and storytelling by our own monty montgomery and a special thanks to author stephen mansfield his book paul harvey's america is available wherever you buy your books and what a story 70 years on the air every day since 1945 straight to 2009 and he hurdles straight in to the 21st century as modern and present a voice as we've ever known the story of paul harvey the story of modern american broadcasting he was the best there ever was on our american stories abc thursdays the bachelor is entering its golden era with the premiere of the golden bachelor for the 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