Celebrating The Original “Morning Show Guy”: My Dad 🙂
My late father, John G. Young, would have been 84 years old this past February 28th…he despised celebrating birthdays to the point where he basically lied to all of us that he was actually born on a Leap Year, February 29th, so we would only bring it up every four years (that never worked; we were all even MORE fascinated by his birthday after that story). My Dad was killed by COVID-19 back on November 30th, 2020, right before the distribution of life-saving vaccines. But before he left this Earth, he left a “humor legacy” that helped propel me into my unlikely career as a morning radio show host. In fact, he called into my show several times over the years, offering off-the-cuff quips that made me realize I truly got my verbal gymnastics abilities from him. One of those appearances, in late 2013, was recorded for posterity, and I tend to play it every year on his birthday. In radio-speak we call it a “drop,” or a quick 5 to 10 second piece of audio that makes a great end to a segment, or the beginning of a song, etc. After asking my father to give me a drop to promote my long-running trivia game “What Do You Think?”, he supplied the following: “This is John Young, John Young’s Dad…I want you to know that John’s got his own radio show, and if you’ll listen to him, he’ll make a lot more money, and I can have him adopt me…what do you think?” The comedic fruit didn’t fall far from the tree…we miss you, Pop!
