My all-time favorite of Paul Harvey's kickers(the frequently humorous end of his broadcasts) involved me, though only to a small degree. My daughter had been born in Bangor, Maine, after which my Rockland home area newspaper published the announcement but with a typesetting error. A local business owner in Rockland sent the item to Paul Harvey. I can't write it the way Paul Harvey spoke it, but if you can imagine:
"Oh, I must tell you about this ......... this baby born up in Bangor, Maine, to Lawreston and Terrie Crute. Amy Wyeth Crute is fine, though it must have been a difficult delivery. A Rockland newspaper wrote that when the unit arrives it will be 26 and 1/2 feet long, is constructed of fiber glass, with a steel-reinforced frame.......................Angel and I wish the mother well and assume that Amy must have been delivered by a ..................crane?........................Paul Harvey..............Good day!
The gist was that a local school department had taken delivery of a short school bus which was to be a rolling guidance office for the offshore islands school system. The description of the bus got typographically set over into the birth announcements.
Later, by three months, those who could have read Yankee Magazine would have seen the cartoon as seen in Photo #1. I wrote to the magazine to see if I could get a copy of the piece, after which I received a response from Rob Trowbridge, Editor. "It is not our custom to dispense copies of our artists' works. However, yours is of an unusual nature and, in a separate mailing I am forwarding you the artist's original 2-page drawing from which publication was made."(See Photo #2)
The staple marks are evident from the paper having been attached to the drawing board.
But the Paul Harvey routine was my favorite and Terrie and I received voluminous telephone calls about it, from the far and wide of Paul Harvey coverage.
RIP, Mrs. Harvey. My guess is that you had something to do with that particular kicker.
HR
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