My Paul Harvey Story

The Dodge Ram Superbowl commercial that featured Paul Harvey's monologue "So God Made a Farmer" was far and away the best commercial of  a rather dismal lot this year. Harvey, who passed away in 2009, delivered the speech to a Future Farmers Association convention in 1978. Farm.com made a YouTube video in 2011 that was a forerunner of the Dodge Ram version - just fewer Ram trucks and lower production values.

I met Paul Harvey once; in fact I spent several hours with him one evening. The occasion was a fund-raising dinner in Nashville, held on behalf of the Herald of Truth radio and television programs. Harvey had been hired as the keynote speaker. This was way back when Hector was a pup, and I worked for the advertising agency that made the arrangements.

To be honest, I can't remember what my role was that evening, or for that matter, why the agency even sent me to Nashville in the first place. I just know that I was there. On the afternoon of the dinner, another guy from the agency and I drove (he drove, I was along for the ride) to the general aviation terminal at the Nashville airport and picked up Mr. Harvey and another gentleman - his publicist, I think - and delivered them to the hotel in downtown Nashville where the banquet was to be held. Harvey was an avid pilot, and had flown his own plane down from his home in Chicago.

On the trip to the hotel, Harvey was chatty, asking about the Herald of Truth program, the churches of Christ in general and what our role in this shindig was. He told us he was good friends with Billy Graham and seemed rather ecumenical in his religious views.

At the hotel, we handed him off to the guys in charge; he and Batsell Barett Baxter, the speaker for the programs at that time, went off together to a nearby room. After the speech - which is a total blank for me, obviously not about farmers - we drove Mr. Harvey and his associate back to the airport. I don't think he said a single word on the return trip. He was working on the next day's broadcast, scribbling in a notebook and reading papers that the publicist had in his briefcase.

And that is my Paul Harvey story.       Good day.