Paul Harvey

Paul Harvey
Harvey receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005
Birth name	Paul Harvey Aurandt
Born	(1918-09-04)September 4, 1918 Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
Died	February 28, 2009(2009-02-28) (aged 90) Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
Resting place	Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois
Alma mater	University of Tulsa
Show	The Rest of the Story Paul Harvey News and Comment
Network	ABC Radio Networks
Country	United States
Spouse(s)	Lynne "Angel" Cooper Harvey (1940–2008; her death)
Children	Paul Harvey, Jr.

Paul Harvey Aurandt (September 4, 1918 – February 28, 2009), better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Harvey's programs reached as many as 24 million people a week. Paul Harvey News was carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations and 300 newspapers.

Harvey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The son of a policeman who was killed by robbers in 1921, Harvey made radio receivers as a young boy. He attended Tulsa Central High School where a teacher, Isabelle Ronan, was "impressed by his voice." On her recommendation, he started working at KVOO in Tulsa in 1933, when he was 14. His first job was helping clean up. Eventually he was allowed to fill in on the air, reading commercials and the news.

While attending the University of Tulsa, he continued working at KVOO, first as an announcer, and later as a program director. Harvey, at age nineteen spent three years as a station manager for KFBI AM, now known as KFDI, a radio station that once had studios in Salina, Kansas. From there, he moved to a newscasting job at KOMA in Oklahoma City, and then to KXOK, in St. Louis in 1938, where he was Director of Special Events and a roving reporter.

Harvey then moved to Hawaii to cover the United States Navy as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the mainland from assignment when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He eventually enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces but served only from December 1943 to March 1944. His critics claimed he was given a psychiatric discharge for deliberately injuring himself in the heel. Harvey angrily denied the accusation, but was vague about details: "There was a little training accident...a minor cut on the obstacle course...I don't recall seeing anyone I knew who was a psychiatrist...I cannot tell you the exact wording on my discharge."