The world of public radio is mourning the loss of the legendary Bob Edwards. The family of NPR’s original host of the “Morning Edition” news magazine says he died Saturday after battling cancer and heart disease. I have these thoughts on the passing of this iconic journalist.
Journalists like me remember when Bob said their name for the first time on-air, as the host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” national news magazine. For me, it was in the late summer of 1986. Bob read the intro to my radio story about New York winemaker Walter S. Taylor.
A corporation bought his family’s company, and the courts ruled he couldn’t use his own name on the labels of the new vineyard he just bought. So, Taylor named it “Bully Hill” (he was a fan of Teddy Roosevelt.) And, he printed his name on the wine labels “Walter S.” followed by a black mark. He was also a member of the NASA art team, and he painted Space Shuttle Columbia on the launch pad before its maiden blastoff. I still have the posters and I still have bottles of Taylor’s Space Shuttle “red” and Space Shuttle “white” — unopened. That was later my first,of many, opportunities to work with Bob Edwards.
If it sounds like I'm spending more time on a news story than on Edwards, that's the point. People who knew him better than I did said the story was always the point. "I don't care if you like me, I care if you believe me," Edwards told an audience in Orlando years ago. I was in that audience, and that line stuck. I use it to this day.
The last time I saw Edwards was an invitation in 2009 to be interviewed on his show on SIRIUS-XM about my second book on the U.S. Space Program, “Trailblazing Mars.” The setting was the Kennedy Space Center just before the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the last repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. It was as much of an honor then, and as it was for the Bully Hill story.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
