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Don Herbert |
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Don Herbert |
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Don Herbert, the last of the original anchors from the launch of all-News KFWB, died February 2, 2008. He was 72. “Don went into the hospital with terrible abdominal pains,” said his wife, Linda. They would have been married 40 years this Friday. “Turned out Don had a ruptured colon and it totally filled him up with poison. They kept him totally sedated, thank God, and everyone was with him at the end.”
Andy Park – who was with Don at the launch of KFWB – responded to Sunday’s bulletin about Don’s passing with a one-word exclamation: “Damn!”
After celebrating his 30th anniversary with all-News KFWB, Don retired in 1998. Since the fall of 1997, he had been on medical leave due to an autoimmune disease called Myasthenia Gravis, which causes severe muscle weakness paralyzing half of his throat.
He joined KFWB one month before the station went all-News. A native of Brooklyn (born December 16, 1935), Don made his radio debut in 1955 on WABP-Tuscaloosa while attending the University of Alabama. His career took him to Birmingham, Mobile and Little Rock, as well as Palm Beach, Florida before arriving at WTOP-Washington, DC.
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In Washington, Don covered local and national news with frequent assignments to the Pentagon, State Department and Capitol Hill as well as being a fill-in reporter at the White House. After two years, Don moved to Los Angeles where he became a writer and producer for KRCA/Channel 4 news in Burbank. In 1968, when Westinghouse geared up for an all-News format, Don decided to return to the air. “He had a great career, he had animals he loved, 2 kids he adored... he really had everything,” said his wife. “He really, really had a good life.” (Linda and Don Herbert) |
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Richard Rudman, former director of engineering at KFWB, emailed: “I remember Don as KFWB's self-appointed Morale Officer. I was often the good-natured target of engineering comments he wrote in his classic ‘KFWB NOOSELINE.’ I was identified as ‘Tubes’ Krikey. What kept me at KFWB from 1975 until 2002 were stellar colleagues like Don and others who never forgot that broadcasting should be more than a business. I treasure my copy of his book, We'll Have More Music Right After The News, but I treasure more the memories of the years of working side-by-side with one of the nicest human beings I have ever known. Is it possible to feel sadness and laughter at the same time when one hears that someone has passed? If you do not know the answer to that, you probably did not know Don Herbert.”
Roger Carroll wrote: “How sad. Don was a class act, the pro newsman and a gentleman. My condolences to his family.”
David Alpern worked at KFWB from 1992-97. “I knew Don Herbert as a gentleman who also served as the station’s historian and publisher of our employee newsletter. More recently, Don self-published We'll Have More Music, Right After the News, a look at the three decades of all-News radio here in LA. Don referred to nearly everyone in our newsletter as the ‘lovely’ plus their name. He enjoyed re-printing the humorous slip-ups that inadvertently were voiced on the air. During my years there, Don was slowly moved out of primetime and into the graveyard overnight shift, and he eventually retired altogether from the station in 1998. Born Herbert Rosenblum, he employed the name Don Herbert on air, forever leading him to proclaim himself as “that other guy” due to the existence of the more famous Mr. Wizard, who’s name was also Don Herbert.”
“What a bummer!,” wrote
Mary Lyon. “I loved Don Herbert! He was such a great
talent, but even better, he had a terrific sense of humor.
He was known and respected for an unflappable and
smooth-as-silk delivery on the air, and a friendly, reliable
voice that just seemed to embody KFWB. When that voice was
on the air, you knew exactly where you were.”
“I worked there first as an
editor's assistant way back when, and later as an anchor,
and thoroughly enjoyed being in his orbit. He was friendly
and congenial to everyone from the lowest to the highest,”
said Mary.
She also recalls what made Don Herbert unique: “What was
really distinctive about him was this habit he had of
putting together a little in-house newsletter every week or
so that he would issue to everyone in the building, with
updates, gossip, cartoons, newsroom happenings, and humorous
observations. He delighted in highlighting outtakes and
misread lines of copy on the air, and one of his favorites
was listing the many bloopers that mixed obituaries with the
weather report. For example, ‘So-and-So died at the age of
72 degrees.’ More than once, he would delight in busting one
hapless anchor named Don Herbert on this.”
“I suspect he would probably be the first to seize that
opportunity again with great relish and that perennial
twinkle in his eye [AND in his voice] once he sits down in
front of the microphone in that Great On-Air Booth in the
Sky: ‘...and veteran KFWB newsman Don Herbert has died at
the age of 72 degrees.’”
“God Bless Don Herbert! He made a great newsroom even better
and livelier, and more human, with his presence and his
exquisite sense of whimsy. DANG! We've lost a real giant. A
gentle giant, and a marvelous wit. And just when we need him
the most. He was SO cool! He will be hugely missed – at the
age of ANY degrees,” concluded Lyon.
Nancy Plum
said that “Don Herbert will
be remembered! I only worked with him briefly at KFWB in
1993 but it was a stressful time in my personal life in that
period and he always made me laugh at work. His newsletters
about KFWB were always fun to read too! Such a pro and such
a nice man!”
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When Don’s book was published in 2005, LARadio.com ran this piece in 2005: Herbert’s 22-Minute World. On Friday, Steve Harvey devoted his entire Only in LA column tin the LA Times to Don Herbert’s new book, You Give Us 22 Minutes:
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"You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world"
is the slogan of all-news station KFWB-AM (980), and
there's something about the mathematics of that
statement that has always bothered me. I mean, if
the news is delivered in three cycles per hour….
"Twenty-two
minutes?" ex-KFWB newsman Don Herbert remembers
recalling. "That would give us a 66-minute hour. How
could that be, especially if we, as newscasters,
were supposed to be accurate?" |
