I cleaned this up to send back to the list and to wa8rhs.

I never knew of Ed, but I would like to know if they are going to rerun any
of his shows.

I have wamu on my stream.

  This appeared in yesterdays Washington Post.

 

 

  Ed Walker, WAMU personality who burnished radios golden age, 

dies at 83

  By Paul Farhi

 

 

  Ed Walker, who amused and entertained a generation of Washington-area 

listeners as half of The Joy Boys radio team with Willard Scott and spent 65
years on the local airwaves as a deejay, news host and genial raconteur,
died Oct. 26 at a retirement community in Rockville, just hours  after his
final broadcast. He was 83.

 

  Mr. Walker had been undergoing treatment for cancer, said his 

daughter, Susan Scola.

 

  A lifelong radio connoisseur, Mr. Walker became one of its most 

skillful practitioners over his long career. For the past quarter century,
he hosted a  popular weekly radio-nostalgia program, The Big Broadcast, on
public radio station WAMU-FM (88.5). Each week, he invited listeners to
settle back, relax and enjoy, as he discussed and introduced r replays of
such golden-age programs as Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, DragnetD and
CGunsmoke.

 

He recorded his last CBig Broadcast on Oct. 13 from 

a hospital bed while being treated at Sibley Memorial Hospital in
Washington. Mr . Walker listened to the final broadcast Sunday night on
WAMU, surrounded by  his family, a few hours before his death, according to
the station.

 

  Born blind, Mr. Walker grew up with radio as his constant companion 

from an early age. By age 8, he was operating a low-power radio transmitter
in his  familys basement, beaming music to his neighbors houses down the
block. He would go on to spend almost all of his adult life involved  in the
medium in some way, all of it on stations in Washington.

 

It was The Joy Boys a gently humorous, 

somewhat anarchic and broadly popular daily program 4 for which Mr. Walker
is perhaps most fondly remembered.

 

  Mr. Walker and Scott became friends while working on American 

University campus radio outlet, WAMU, then an AM station. They got their
professional start in 1952 doing short comedy bits on a weekend radio show
on WOL alled  Going AWOL. In 1955, they moved to daytime on NBC-owned WRC
with a show called Two at One

 

  When the show became a local hit, they moved into the evening hours 

as  The Joy Boys.

 

  Mr. Walker conjured up a series of characters and situations, some of 

them topical. He did the voices of such characters as Old Granddad and
BalEmore Benny (the poet of the PatapscoD) while Scott played the straight
man. They parodied NBCs leading newscast, The Huntley-Brinkley ReportD with
The Washer-Dryer ReportE2 809D and a popular soap opera with a continuing
bit called As the  Worm Turns.

 

  The duo took CJoy Boys from the nickname used by  student radio
technicians at an engineering school in Washington, Scott said. For years,
they used a jaunty theme song: We are the joy boys of radio; we chase
electrons to and fro.

 

The program traded off the improvisational skills of the two men and 

their on-air chemistry. Scott was typically the writer of their bits, which
were  roughed out in outline rather than fully scripted. Mr. Walker was the
talent, according to Scott, who would take the comedy in unexpected
directions.

 

We were like brothers, said Scott, who would go on to become the weatherman
on NBCs CToday show, in an interview. I never had a better friend.

The Joy Boys would feature occasional guests; over 

the years, these included comedian Bill Cosby, Get SmartD actor D on Adams
and novelist and quiz-show panelist Fannie Flagg. As Mr. Walker recounted on
his final CBig Broadcast, the duo scored an interview in 1968 with the
radio, TV and film star Jack Benny and performed a brief sketch with him.

 

  One of Mr. Walkers characters was Mr. Answer Man, who served  up lame
jokes in a monotone.

 

What was the inspiration for the song Melancholy 

Baby

a listener from Falls Church once asked.

 

The composer had a girlfriend with a head like a melon and a 

Back like a collie, Mr. Walker replied. Hence Melanc holy Baby.

 

  As Scott said in an interview in 1999, The Joy Boys 

bits were corny; for the most part, they were terrible. But there was a
certain  spirit.

 

  A link to radios classic era of family-friendly Entertainment,

The Joy Boys aired on WRC from 1955 to 1972, and on WWDC from

1972 to 1974. It was cancelled by WWDC to make way for the station s switch
to rock music, a change that reflected the growing dominance of baby boomers
over Washingtons, and the nations, popular culture.

 

  Mr. Walker went on to work at radio stations WPGC and WMAL and 

Television stations WJLA and News channel 8. Among the programs he hosted on
WMAL was Play It Again, a retrospective of music from the big band era . He
also hosted a weekly magazine show for NPR aimed at the disabled called
Cconnection.

 

  In 1990, Mr. Walker took over hosting another kind of nostalgia show, 

The Big Broadcast.

 

  The program had begun as Recollections in 1964 by 

John Hickman, who had appeared from time to time on The Joy Boys as a
performer. When Hickmans health began to fail, he asked Mr. Walker to take
over the program.

 

  Edward Heston Walker was born in Fairbury, Ill., on April 23, 1932. 

His family moved from Forrest, Ill., to Washington when he was 4. His
father, a f ormer railroad telegrapher, joined the federal Railroad
Retirement Board.

 

  His earliest memories involved listening to the radio. He recalled 

ringing a toy cowbell as a small child along with the performers and
audience he would hear on a program called The National Barn Dance.

 

  CMost kids [got] a kick out of comic books, and funny papers 

and stuff like thatD he said in an interview with NPRs StoryCorp s in 2012.
To me, radio is it. The sound effects to me were most important.  I absorbed
[the medium] very well because I was listening very intently.

 

Mr. Walker graduated in 1950 from the Maryland School for the Blind 

in Baltimore and was the first blind student to attend American University.
The Districts vocational rehabilitation agency, which funded his college
scholarship, wanted him to study sociology in order to become a social
worker, one of the few professional career paths open to the blind at the
time. M r. Walker insisted on pursuing a career in broadcasting. He
completed his communications degree in 1954.

 

Besides his daughter, of Potomac, survivors include his wife of 58 

years, Nancy Murphy Walker of Rockville; and eight grandchildren. Another
daughter , Carole Potter, died in 2004.

 

Long after The Joy Boys, he continued to work with 

Scott when his old friend was on CToday.  Among other duties, Mr . Walker
handled the crush of people seeking recognition for a friend or rel ative
celebrating their 100th birthday. Mr. Walker helped produce the short
tributes that Scott read on the air.

 

  Mr. Walker never attempted to conceal his blindness, but he 

Didn't often speak about it on the air. When I first got into this business,
I never let it be known on the air that I didn't see, he told The Washington
Post in 1985. Not that I was ashamed of it. It was in my mind that if I was
going to be successful in this business, it was because I was a good
performer, not because people felt sorry for me.  From his earliest days on
the air, he used a Braille typewriter to 

produce scripts. While on the air, he kept his left hand on a Braille clock
to maintain the precise timing necessary to hit the marksD for commercials
or the end of his show, said Lettie Holman, program director at WAMU, who
worked with Mr. Walker for years. He was so skilled that most listeners were
surprised when they learned, often many years into his career, that he was
blind.

 

  He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009 as a 

local-radio pioneer.

 

 

 

Howard Kaufman MSW LCSW