Sheplives

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Tales of the Late, Great Jean Shepherd
Airdate: Tuesday - October 19, 1999

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To say Jean Shepherd told stories is like saying Fred Astaire danced. Accurate, but incomplete. "I had never heard anything like him on the radio," says long-time city radio host Jonathan Schwartz. "Someone who spoke so extemporaneously and interestingly. I sat in front of the radio when he was on, watching it as if it were a movie." Shepherd, who died Saturday at 78, hosted TV shows and wrote prolifically. But his indelible imprint in these parts was his nighttime radio show on WOR, which began in 1956 and ran for more than two decades. The show was a monologue, wonderfully nonlinear. He would start one place and a word would send him somewhere else, often to a kid named Ralph Parker growing up in the Hammond, Ind.-like town of Hohman with friends like Flick and girls like Wanda Hickey. His mother wore a chenille bathrobe and made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Shepherd would play "The Sheik of Araby" on kazoo. He would explode with laughter or whisper like your best friend. He had the voice everyone on the radio wants and he painted pictures with brilliant brushstrokes: children making their way to school in winter, "only the faint glint of two eyes peering out of a mound of moving clothing," like "tiny frozen bowling balls with feet." Max Schmid of WBAI, who will help note Shepherd's death at this weekend's annual Friends of Old-Time Radio convention in Newark, says it's simple: "He's the best person who ever sat in front of a microphone." "He combined an original way of telling stories," says Schwartz, with a vast breadth of "information outside the stories." That is, all those non sequiturs connected. Shepherd had an entertainer's ego and even in private, Schwartz says, tended toward monologue. After WOR, he pulled away from radio. In his final interview with Alan Colmes on WEVD last December, he said radio was just one canvas he used. "Some people felt he was contemptuous of radio," says Colmes. "But his radio fans are his most passionate. He was a big influence on me. He used the medium in a way no one else has and his stories are timeless." Colmes plans to rerun that last interview tomorrow at 11 p.m. on WEVD (1050 AM). Schmid calls parts of the last interviews "painful." But Shepherd never let any audience get too comfortable. He would end shows by whispering, "Can you imagine 4,000 years passing and you're not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty." Still, cynicism tends to be a cloak for wounded faith, and Schwartz says that distinguishes Shepherd from hosts today who get their laughs at the expense of others. "He never dehumanized anyone," says Schwartz. "His stories were life-affirming. Past, present and future, he celebrated life." Long-time friend Irwin Zwilling says a memorial celebration is planned.

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