Robin & Me

Some regular readers have noted my frequent inclusion of public radio's Here & Now and asked, "What's the deal with you and Robin?"

On my way into WBCN-FM for an overnight shift on October 20, 1973, I was listening to AM giant WBZ in Boston. My car had no FM radio.

6 nights a week there would have been a talk show during those hours, but Saturday was an aberration... Robin Young played music and that night told a story of how she'd been stopped for speeding on her way to work, but the officer laughed it off when he found Robin had her newly purchased Halloween Pumpkin riding shotgun... And buckled up for safety with passenger-side seat belt firmly secured.

She sounded like someone I'd want to meet, so once I arrived at my studio, I called hers and invited her to meet me for breakfast with the rest of the cast of "Little Bill's Teenage Madness." She said no, but not in a way that suggested she'd be washing her hair forever.

My plan to try again was derailed within days as my father faced a potentially fatal ruptured aneurysm.

A few weeks later, when I did meet Robin, she was already dating our mid-day guy, Tommy Hadges... A relationship that lasted until 1980.

Over the years, face to face encounters were rare. And perhaps the most time we ever spent together was back to back, typing... She composing a letter to college friends while I prepared a newscast. But my appreciation of her work grew, as did a shared perception that in mass media it was both rare, and increasingly difficult, to find a place to "be all that you can be." (Both the Dissector & Mattress Man would be apoplectic....'Did Mono just quote an ad for the Army?')

I love her curiosity, compassion, clarity, sense of fun and ease of connection. It may have started with a passenger-seat pumpkin riding shotgun, but long before her journey put her in the anchor chair at WBUR, Boston's NPR News Station, I came to respect Robin Young as one of the most gifted natural communicators I've heard.

And now, as someone whose own journey included working directly with not only the iconic figures of early WBCN but four National Radio Hall of Fame members in Los Angeles, I can say she's good enough to be in there, too.