Paul Harvey was remembered Saturday as a legendary radio personality whose passion for telling stories of ordinary American lives was surpassed only by his devotion to his late wife, Lynne, who was his closest professional collaborator.
A week after the 90-year-old national broadcaster died at his winter home in Phoenix, he was remembered during an hourlong funeral at Fourth Presbyterian Church on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.
Paul Harvey Jr. captured the moment by quoting his father’s own words when President Franklin Roosevelt died: “A great tree has fallen and left an empty place against the sky.”
The eulogy, which Paul Harvey Jr. wrote, took the form of his father’s program “The Rest of the Story.” He described how his father built model airplanes and developed an infatuation with radio by picking up stations on a homemade cigar-box crystal set.
The son also noted his father swept radio station floors as a teenager long before he was one of the most listened-to broadcasters in radio history.
By trying to emulate his father’s “magic voice,” Paul Harvey Jr. said he discovered his father had another gift that few noticed: “His gift of encouragement.”
About 200 people attended the service, where pastor John Buchanan said the radio legend had an almost religious devotion for the lives of ordinary human beings. He considered them “sacred,” Buchanan said.
“He saw the significance of everyday human life,” Buchanan said.
Several prominent media figures attended, including Farid Suleman, chairman and chief executive of Citadel Broadcasting, which syndicated Harvey under ABC Radio Networks.
Another was Bruce DuMont, founder and president of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, who said Harvey’s voice “is indelibly etched in all of our minds.”
Standing outside the church at Chestnut Street and Michigan Avenue, DuMont recalled how Harvey and Lynne arrived in Chicago about 65 years ago and immediately “fell in love with the city.”
“They shared that love with the nation through their broadcasts and today the city, the nation and the industry of radio can offer them a final farewell,” DuMont said.
The funeral included the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and the Noel Coward song “I’ll See You Again.” Both titles could have described Harvey’s nearly 68-year romance with the woman he nicknamed “Angel.” The two met while working in St. Louis and the story has it that he proposed on their first date. She died in May.
Paul Harvey Jr. recalled how his father once said to her, “I wish I was Peter Pan and could come to your window and take you to Neverland.”
“Now,” he said, “they’re on their way.”
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gfsmith@tribune.com
