Local author lights up radio icon's past
Luck favors the prepared, and when radio icon Paul Harvey died in February, local author Paul Batura was in perfect position to publish the rest of the story.
Batura's "Good Day! The Paul Harvey Story" became the first biography on the beloved Harvey when it was released in May.
"It was shocking to me that no one had written a biography," Batura said. "He was discounted by a lot of people who thought he was a character who only appealed to the corn-fed middle of America. But his ratings didn't reflect that."
Harvey had 24 million listeners a week at his peak and remained popular until his last broadcast a week before his death.
This biography was no rush job. Batura, 37, began his research on Harvey a decade ago.
Batura - who is a writer and researcher for James Dobson at Focus on the Family - wanted to write about Harvey's Christian faith.
"I thought, ‘Surely someone more gifted than me is going to write the definitive biography, but here's something I can do that's in my comfort zone,'" Batura said. "It was a crutch in a way."
He traveled to Chicago in 2000 to meet Harvey and pitch his idea for a book about Harvey's faith. He sat in the waiting room listening to Harvey tap away on his IBM Selectric typewriter, before the dapper showman came out in his customary sport coat and stuck out his hand, saying, "Hello my fellow American."
Harvey politely told Batura that he didn't have time for extracurricular writing and, well, good day. Publishers weren't interested in such a narrow look at Harvey without the man's cooperation.
Undaunted, Batura contacted Harvey now and again to see if he'd changed his mind. He also began collecting everything written by Harvey or about Harvey that he could find, building a base of knowledge about Harvey's father's violent death, his early failures in radio, the secret wedding date of his long marriage, and his hunger for success.
Finally, in 2008, after being consistently rebuffed by Harvey and by Paul Harvey Jr., Batura decided to do a complete biography without their help. He quickly found a publisher - Regnery Publishing, which has specialized in conservative authors from William F. Buckley Jr. to Ann Coulter - and began to research in earnest.
Batura hopscotched across the country, from Harvey's hometown of Tulsa, to many of the towns where he worked in radio as Paul Harvey Aurandt before he became an empire - Salina, Kan., Missoula, Mont., Kalamazoo, Mich.
Batura interviewed more than 100 people who knew Paul Harvey from the time he was a boy to round out his profile of the man.
His book was due in two weeks when Harvey died, Batura said, so he changed tenses, wrote a new introduction, and it was off to the presses. He beat the second biography on Paul Harvey by a few weeks.
His depiction of Harvey is adoring in some respects, such as his words on the day Harvey died at age 90: "Though February 28, 2009, was a ‘good day' for the inhabitants of heaven, it was a sad day for those still on earth."
But, while he doesn't dwell on them, he doesn't shy away from the more controversial aspects of Harvey's legacy.
"I knew the criticism of this book from the elitist media would be, ‘This is a total shill writing a pro-Harvey book,'" Batura said.
So, he mentions Harvey's controversial military record, his trespassing arrest at an atomic lab while going after a scoop and subsequent fabrication that he was on a secret government mission, and his general proclivity to not let facts stand in the way of a good story when it came to his personal history.
He also documents Harvey's conservative politics. Even though he was a pioneer and model for today's news pundits, Harvey saw himself more as the voice of Middle America than an apologist for conservatism, more dime-store wisdom than Rush Limbaugh bombast.
Fan or foe, there's no denying Harvey's success. He spent 76 years on the radio, Batura said, and commanded $2 million a year from an advertiser to be snuck into the broadcast once a week on "Paul Harvey News and Comment."
The man who was already being touted as an old-fashioned American in the 1950s held America's ear for decades. And the salesman and storyteller said that when he got to heaven, this would be his pitch at the pearly gates: "St. Peter, sir. I did what I could while I could to keep that little United States of America sold on itself."
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BOOK SIGNING
"Good Day! The Paul Harvey Story," talk and book signing with author Paul Batura
Where: Borders bookstore, 2120 Southgate Road; 632-6611
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
