Mac - Lileks had a

Mac - Lileks had a blast from my own past, in this scene from a postcard show:

The best find: some promotional cards for KSTP’s new studio, including some shots of the station’s talent. I didn’t recognize any of the names save one: John McDougal. He did the news for the AM station when I started working there. A big man, Foghorn Leghorn-shaped. A mild manner, a voice from that was mostly gut with a high note of nose to give it distinction. If something went wrong in a broadcast he had a way of looking over his glasses that loosened the bladders of novice board operators. Forty years of broadcast know-how came down on your sorry head.

Mac was the News Director when I started at KSTP, back in '85 - about a year and a half before Lileks, if memory serves. He'd had a fascinating pedigree; before working out his waning years at KSTP-AM, in a post that was probably largely ceremonial - it was well into the era when radio stations just didn't have their own news departments anymore - Mac had been the anchor for Channel 5 (KSTP-TV) News. Stanley Hubbard apparently felt enough loyalty for his old warhorse to keep him on the air, somewhere.

Before that, he'd been in New York. He'd been a big voice-over guy. He was sort of the Tom Barnard of his day; his voice appeared on a dizzying variety of commercials, and if you listen to some of the old "Christmas Story" audio records from the fifties, Mac is the narrator.

Before that, he'd been drafted from his first radio job (at the original WLOL radio in Minneapolis) and served as an infantryman, all the way across Europe in WWII.

Lileks continues:

He died nearly 10 years ago, but here he was in a suburban community center, filed away in an envelope of unopened promotional material. Caught me by surprise, it did.

Wonder if I’ll find a stack of my promotional postcards at a show some day. Fifty cents for the lot! Fine by me. That's what happened to John, and he was the best in the business. One approving nod from his gray head was like having the Museum of Broadcasting drape a medal around your neck. Posterity sometimes just seems like a drunk passing out cigars at random - when it passes over men like John you realize how arbitrary fortune can be, and how the Valhalla of the Briefly Reknowned But Mostly Obscure is probably the most interesting quarter of the afterlife. I'd post his picture here, but you'd forget it tomorrow. I'll post it some other day when I need to summon his shade. You'll know what I mean when it happens.

You surely will.

We worked together on the old Don Vogel show at KSTP - John, producer Dave Elvin (who's now a PR guy in Boston), sports guy Bruce Gordon or Mark Boyle (I have no idea where either of them are), and Mac. And while everything Lileks says is true - being on the wrong end of his wrath after you screwed something up, you knew how Moses felt after his people had really boned one, and a compliment from him, rare as it was, truly meant something - Mac was saved from being a stereotype cliche "crusty old news guy from central casting" by genuinely liking the motley crews he found himself cast up with.

Wow. Hadn't thought about him for quite a while.

Posted by Mitch at April 21, 2003 07:06 AM