Former Wisconsin Governor Tony Earl Dies, Gentler Politics, Too

Tony Earl during a 1986 campaign trip in Door County, aboard Utopia with Gregory Humphrey

One of those politicians all would agree was a most pleasant and kind man died on Thursday.  Tony Earl, the former Wisconsin Governor was 86 years old, and though politics always creates a bevy of differences over policies it can be said he had genuine friends on all sides of the political spectrum.  I saw that play out in person as Earl sought reelection in 1986, a time when our state politics could be frothy but not yet downright mean.

That summer I drove my aqua-marine colored Chevet into the driveway of Fred Peterson, owner of the famed Peterson Shipbuilding family in Sturgeon Bay. I note the car type as I knew it did not blend harmoniously with the impressive home and lawns of a very successful businessman and shipyard owner. I knew he was a staunch conservative Republican and what I, the chairperson of the Door County Democrats, was about to suggest was plucky, for sure.  Earl had wanted to make a campaign swing through the county and his staff wondered if I might arrange for an event.  I pondered it for a couple days and then thought way outside of the box about an idea that was sure to generate press.   

Having lived in Door County for a couple of years I knew Peterson had constructed, in 1946, the famed staysail schooner, Utopia.  Soon thereafter he took three years to circumnavigate the globe. The stories of that trip were often talked about by locals.  Peterson greeted me warmly at his door and if was soon thereafter I suggested that he take Governor Tony Earl on a ride aboard his beloved schooner with some others from around the county.

Photo from Inland Seas Education Association

His first responses are ones that did surprise me and these decades later they are fondly recalled as they speak to a gentler time of state politics.  Peterson wondered what dates were being suggested, how many might be aboard, and whether there should be some snacks and soda served.  I do not recall he ever said yes, but rather just started planning how to make it happen upon the governor’s arrival.  That classy older man speaks to the way our politics once really did play out.

The scheduled day on the water was warm, and sunny, with just a few clouds above while perfect harmony was onboard. Fred was proud of his schooner and honored to have the governor out for a trip; my fellow Democrats were pleased to be there, a few local businesspeople I asked to join were able to talk with Earl about ideas, and his campaign staff was truly pleased with the event which garnered press attention.  It strikes me as I write about the death of Earl and that excursion on the Utopia how people from different ends of the political divide could unite. People who might be grousing about property taxes, environmental policy, or the need for more transportation funds were able to find common bonds while relaxing and viewing the beauty of Door County.

In 2006, I chatted again with Tony Earl following a concert at Overture Hall in Madison. We talked about the years that had gone by and reflected on the time when the tone and style of politics were gentler and seemingly less rhetorically driven. The former governor knew a boatload about state politics, the upsides of winning, as well as the sting of defeat. Through it all, as I reminded him, he was always a gentleman and gracious. His eyes still flashed, and his words still had precision and honesty; laced often with humorous phrasing which allowed him to be a great storyteller. When I asked Earl if he missed the excitement of the campaign trail he flatly stated he did not since politics had become just plain mean and nasty. He told stories of how he would have heated disagreements with his opponents, but at the end of the day the common bonds of friendship took control, and the arguments were retired. He added the personal assaults aimed at each other make politics harsher, and less fun.

The thing that struck me about Earl in 1986 was his genuineness, which was not a trait I noticed in every politician I would come to know. He was solid enough with his own set of principles that he would not campaign on Sundays when running for re-election, even though many tried to convince him otherwise. That type of person with strong inner convictions has always moved me in his or her direction. With the passing of Tony Earl, we know we have lost more than a man many respected and admired.  We also have lost another slice of decency and honor which was a staple of our state politics.

My New Doty Land Podcast: Elvis, Thunderstorms, Dan Rather, And Local Radio

Fond memories of Gregory Humphrey’s first day on WDOR radio with Elvis’ music, recollections of Dan Rather one Sunday morning on a Texas radio station, and a severe thunderstorm in Sturgeon Bay when a Brewer baseball game is knocked off the air as callers light up the phone lines!  Funny memories with another Doty Land professional-sounding podcast.

Doty Land is not the biggest or the best podcast, but it is mine and it makes for lots of smiles and hours well-spent on the Madison isthmus.

Photos: Butch’s Bar, Life, Lost To Fire In Sturgeon Bay

Tragedy in Sturgeon Bay.

One person is dead, one is injured and another remains unaccounted for after a fire early Tuesday morning at Butch’s Bar in downtown Sturgeon Bay

The drone photography of Paul Haan underscores the enormous loss this week in Door County as the bar was consumed in flames.

I passed this building at least once a day as I went about my life during the years working at WDOR AM/FM. When working in my other role as a politico in Door County I would go into this bar and pass out campaign lit and shake hands for the Democratic blue-collar vote at election time. The owner at the time was a union man and a Democratic member of the county organization.

Sadness Mars Holiday Tradition, Waukesha Children Deprived Of Magical Feeling At Parade

It was a jarring end to a very nice day in Wisconsin.

Sunshine had allowed for people to get outdoors in the afternoon and feel the brisk winds while some people took the warm weather as a sign to–at last–put up outdoor decorations. I noticed others raking lawns and terraces in the afternoon and kids out biking again before winter snows finally arrive. Everyone seemed to be outside and smiling.

And it was, without doubt, that same sense of uplift from such weather that people were feeling as they gathered in Waukesha for the best type of parade there can be—especially if you are a kid. The Christmas parade!

As we sat down for dinner on the isthmus we heard the devastating news.

We turned on the television and saw terrified people, with debris left all about after an SUV drove through the ones participating in the parade, or watching from the sidewalks. As I write some details are emerging with reports of more than 20 people injured, and some killed. The vehicle was located and photos show the horror that played out with the damage to the front end. The driver is in custody.

Of all the images that have poured out on Twitter, there was one, above all, that punches the hardest.

The news of who died has not been released as of this posting. But I can not help but consider that a child–not necessarily the one in the above stroller–left for that Christmas parade with pure excitement on the face, but will never go home again.

The speeding vehicle was simply appalling, and whoever was driving, utterly reprehensible. There have been enough raw nerves, pain, suffering, and stresses for our society in this state over the past weeks. No one should now need to endure this horrific crime ramping up to the holiday season.

I feel for all of the victims, but especially the children. How can that not be the case?

I know the following will sound hokey, but it is how I feel.

When I worked at WDOR our station annually broadcast over the radio a Christmas parade. Ed Allen, Sr. would create the theater of the mind as the sights and sounds were placed into words for the listeners throughout the Door County peninsula. And of course, he would chat with all sorts of people who attended. The best conversations were with kids who might otherwise have been taken aback by a news camera, but there was nothing to be afraid of from a microphone!

So Ed would engage them in banter and it was always the highlight to hear the expressions of delight coming from youngsters who were at that age when Christmas was magical.

It should have been the same for the boys and girls tonight in Waukesha, too.

It was not.

What a dreadful way to start the holiday season.

And so it goes.

I Hear Ed Allen Sr. Calling…..

While watching the CBS Evening News about the horrific tornadoes that struck large portions of the South an odd memory came to mind. During the report video footage from the RV service and repair business in Moundville, Alabama was shown. It was most dramatic to see the large vehicles tossed about like match-box cars.

But it was when the name of business owner Tommy Muckenfuss was carefully pronounced on the air that I smiled. And thought of the owner of WDOR, the Sturgeon Bay radio station where I had my first job in the 1980s. I had come across a name much like that Alabama man while on-air in a newscast and learned the hard way why always pre-reading the copy is a good idea.

When I slipped up shortly after starting my radio job and added a hard ‘k’ sound to the-then-City Attorney Staufaucher’s name it created a phone call from the owner. At least on-air I always had the ability at times like that to never look back and just keep talking. It was soon apparent to the owner that I knew my slip-up was not professional and I was determined that type of error would not be repeated.  

Ed Allen, Sr. knew I had an old-school reverence for radio broadcasting and took my on-air time seriously. So he just reminded me to pre-read the names of local people I had not before encountered.

I had to smile broadly tonight as the CBS reporter, David Begnaud, eased up and over what Trevor James (my on-air radio moniker) would have plowed through with the hard K echoing over the country.

Larry King Takes Gregory Humphrey’s Phone Call On Mutual Broadcasting System

Broadcast legend Larry King died today at the age of 87. He was known as the suspenders-sporting everyman whose broadcast interviews with world leaders, movie stars, and ordinary Americans helped define American conversation for nearly 50 years. He was a constant part of late-nights for me on the radio, and I was so pleased to land on his program when his guest was David Gergen during the years President Reagan was dominating our politics.

The voice and tone of King had long amused me with his varied topics and guests. But it was his professional skills behind a microphone that drew me in my late teens and early adult years as a student trying better to learn more about effective broadcasting. I fell asleep to King so often and took notes in the dim light of the radio dial about ways I could become better in the studio. When I moved from an apartment in Wausau I left a rather cocky note that ‘the next Larry King had lived here’.

Needless to say, there is only one Larry King, and my ambitions in radio far outpaced my skills. But what he meant to me in my younger years, and how he inspired me to dream, and number of hours of listening can not be taken away.

I was a caller into King’s Mutual Radio talk show one evening in the mid-80’s–while I was also on the air doing a separate broadcast from the WDOR radio studio in Sturgeon Bay.  While spinning the discs and give ‘time and temp’ I was also monitoring King’s program. Multi-tasking in broadcasting is something that becomes second nature after a while. (There were times when I was listening to two separate baseball games our station was broadcasting with one carried on our AM station, the other game over the FM station. I dropped in the commercials for each and at times even provided an update on the FM game for the AM audience!) So clearly monitoring King while doing my job on-air was not difficult at all.

Finally, King’s producer on the phone said I would be the next caller.  I was feeding the Mutual Radio program through one of the studio’s reel-to-reel tape machines so my national moment with King could be recorded.  (When was the last you were reading about reel-to-reel tapes?)

The world of technology from the tape machines in that radio studio to my current home studio never fails to alert me how far the broadcasting world has changed. I created this 41-second audio/video of the King phone call this morning. (Pictured below Larry King is that youthful broadcaster!)

It is a long way from my listening to Larry King with cheap headphones as a teenager in Hancock, Wisconsin.  King walked a long road of changes in radio broadcasting and I have often wondered what a truly delightful interview it would have been for King to wing his way over the decades with stories about how broadcasting techniques evolved in his lifetime. Obviously, the need for lively and stimulating conversation remains the same since the airwaves were harnessed.  It is just the methods used to get the broadcasts from a broadcaster to a receiver that has changed so remarkably.

And King, with a radio audience coast-to-coast, could make it seem he was talking to one individual on a personal basis. Readers have no idea how hard that is to truly achieve. That is what made him so meaningful to me. What I could relate to was his curiosity about people and how he had actual conversations as opposed to the work that reporters do to get down to the main point lickety-split.

“I don’t pretend to know it all,” he said in a 1995 Associated Press interview. “Not, `What about Geneva or Cuba?′ I ask, `Mr. President, what don’t you like about this job?′ Or `What’s the biggest mistake you made?′ That’s fascinating.”

It was that style that caught my attention as a teenager and what made Larry King a radio legend.

Godspeed.

WDOR Radio At Christmas Time

Among the best times at WDOR radio (Sturgeon Bay) was the Christmas season when it seemed cookies and sweets were always on the desk area in the middle part of the building. Late afternoons we aired Letters To Santa, and my first ever beef cooked medium rare—at a holiday party thrown by the GM–alerted me how mom needed to stop making meat gray! (She never did.)

The record collection of seasonal music over the previous 40 years made for a spirited sound for weeks on-air. And Keta Steebs from the local newspaper (Door County Advocate) calling and asking to have a seasonal drink for the holidays which meant as much talking local politics as anything else.

When I saw this pic (below) my mind flew back and smiles abounded. Life has been good. And radio continues to have a special place in my heart. As does the Allen family who thought I had what they wanted at their station.

Endorsement: Joe Biden, As Character Matters

Every four years Caffeinated Politics has made an endorsement for president. Each of the past four elections my sentiments were sincere, and the policy highlighted met with the needs of the time. This year I again make my call for president, but the issue driving my reasoning is by far the most important of my lifetime. That is because presidential character is on the ballot. This is the one election in our lifetime we absolutely must get correct.

The continuous bombast, crudeness, and reckless behavior from Donald Trump over the past four years were far more than this nation should have had to endure. It was due to his rants and childish ways that I retreated during a portion of each day to read history. I simply sought refuge from his self-generated chaos. But the reading always underscored the stark differences about leadership, decency, and virtue from the past as opposed to the sad reality of Trump.

Earlier this year I read the 1912 nomination speech from Warren G, Harding, then an Ohio newspaper editor, for President William Taft at the Republican Convention. The following portion showcases one of those moments of the stark contrast between then and now.

The nomination speech declared that Taft was “as wise and patient as Abraham Lincoln, as modest and dauntless as Ulysses S. Grant, as temperate and peace-loving as Rutherford B. Hayes, as patriotic and intellectual as James A. Garfield, as courtly and generous as Chester A. Arthur, as learned in the law as Benjamin Harrison, as sympathetic and brave as William McKinley……”

No honest person in the Republican Party today could pen a similar type of statement about Trump. No one in the future will wish to have their political career attached to Trump. Character, after all, is not a word that anyone can employ in a favorable way towards Trump.

We have always had a president in our nation who was able to show empathy and use words from the office to bring a nation together during times of crisis.  That quality of a president has never, perhaps, been understood more clearly than now when we view its glaring absence.

I was on-air at WDOR the night President Reagan spoke to the nation following the horrific explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger. In my lifetime there is perhaps no other speech that so clearly demonstrates the role of a president at times of national crisis, or the heights of rhetorical balm that can come with the office.  I sat in the broadcast studio and was moved to tears.  Contrast national moments such as that one to the current occupant in the White House who continually stokes words to further the anger and resentments of people for partisan advantage.

Two episodes ring out that clearly demonstrate Trump’s lack of a sound character being most obvious, and troubling.  During the 2016 campaign, he made fun of a disabled journalist.  It was a truly pathetic display. During his term in office, he made one of the most gut-wrenching displays when he showed poor behavior toward the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger.  Trump failed to offer comforting words and then petulantly defended himself on Twitter.  It was almost unbearable to watch play out on the national stage.  The lack of his empathy allowed for some of his lowbrow followers to bring down a withering barrage of abuse on the grieving widow during what we all know was the worst moment of her life.

Those two examples demonstrate that Trump is not able to either resist being mean or fails to grasp the requirement of the office to lift others up when they need the nation’s support.

The episodes where a lack of character was evident are all too numerous and well-known.   Veterans will never forget when Trump showed smallness when at first he refused to keep the White House flag at half-mast to honor the late Senator John McCain. 

Character matters.  We say those words often but also take the concept for granted.  When the lack of character is so obvious and smacks at us daily, it becomes a reminder of how much this nation lost when Trump secured the votes of the Electoral College last election.

This year we must do what is right for the nation when we cast a ballot for president. We must do so for our collective national soul.

I can state upfront and with pride of being a Joe Biden guy! I have long known Biden to be a smart and capable man.   In 1987 I supported him financially when he sought the Democratic Party nomination for the White House.  One can never forget his earnestness in fighting the atrocities that were taking place in the Balkans, or his great work on the Judiciary Committee in stopping Robert Bork from getting to the Supreme Court.  His background and breadth of knowledge on international issues make him a seasoned and remarkable public servant.

I can rattle off issues that Biden supports concerning climate change or tax policy which lands at my philosophical foundation. But all that is secondary to the core need of the nation. That is to again have a leader in the White House who understands why decency and virtue are vital for the strength of our nation. That is far and above thy most important reason voters must cast a ballot for Biden.

Voters can talk about their values or religious faith, but this is the time to prove all that is more than just mere words. After all, the idea of virtue is one that requires our diligence.

The idea of virtuous people in government was not lost on the Founders. They wrote and spoke of its worthiness repeatedly. Good character matters, and as individuals, we have a role to make sure the person sitting in the Oval Office is as solid and good as the people. In our republic, we have a responsibility to promote honest leaders in office who will make wise, fact-based decisions. When they fail at that most fundamental requirement of the office the voters must hold them accountable.

There is no way to pretend there are shades of a difference this year in choice for president. And there is no way not to fully grasp the call of our civics lessons from those many years ago. There is only one choice for the nation.

Joe Biden.