Ed Walker spent 65 years on the radio. His last program was unlike any other.

Washington Post ^ | October 22, 1015 | Paul Farhi

[TroutStalker]

Ed Walker didn’t really want to do it. He was tired and sick, he said, and not really up to it. Besides, his voice — the instrument of his preposterously long radio career — was no longer what it had been.

Just once more, pleaded Lettie Holman, Walker’s boss. For the audience, she said. For posterity. His daughter, Susan Walker Scola, agreed, urging her father on.

Walker re-considered. Okay, he said. One more.

So they assembled last week to record one more, the last of the untold thousands of radio programs Walker has done since he broke into radio as a college student 65 years ago, when Harry Truman was president. Holman was there for the final show, as was audio engineer Tobey Schreiner and a couple of Walker’s radio associates, Rob Bamberger and Bob Bybee. The vehicle was “The Big Broadcast,” the weekly radio-nostalgia program that Walker has hosted for the past 25 years on Washington public station WAMU-FM.

The setting was room 623 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. Walker, 83 and battling cancer, had been there a week. He did the show in a hospital gown, connected to a bank of hospital monitors. He insisted on getting out of bed to sit upright. An old pro knows you sound better that way.

“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another edition of ‘The Big Broadcast,’ ” he began one last time. “My name is Ed Walker.”

*

Walker’s usually lively timbre is slower and less assertive on the last recording (which will be broadcast on WAMU on Sunday at 7 p.m.). It’s the same friendly Walker voice, familiar to a few generations of listeners in Washington, but he sounds increasingly weary as he goes on. And maybe a little sadder, too.

[TroutStalker]

Ping!

[iowamark]

http://wamu.org/about/15/10/15/ed_walker_retires

Last week’s show:
http://wamu.org/programs/the_big_broadcast/15/10/18/the_big_broadcast_oct_18_2015

[Tijeras_Slim]

I remember listening to him and Willard Scott in the 60’s.

[itssme]

I started listening to Ed Walker's Big Broadcast program a few months ago..was introduced to this program by a Freeper. I enjoy it immensely and I'm glad to hear that Ed Walker's show format will not change. Listening to Ed's voice and the replay of old radio shows of the 1940s and 1950s, is a trip back in time..in reality, I wish I could visit those years of my youth once again, to visit those years when our country was truly the UNITED States of America. But that was then, and this is now, and We the People will deal with it, like the patriot soldiers that we are.

[Verginius Rufus]

Look at the date. I didn't know that the Washington Compost was even published in 1015. Ethelred the Unready was king of England then.

[mrs. a]

We are the Joy Boys of radio...we chase electrons to and fro!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9IxNqYIbUE

[mkjessup]

I remember Willard Scott and Ed Walker in their ‘Joy Boys’ incarnation on WRC-AM (980 kilocycles if I’m not mistaken), a great program, on a personal note when I was just a kid in Vacation Bible School, I sat on Willard Scott’s lap during a live broadcast of the ‘Bozo Show’ on WRC-TV (1959 as I recall), I had to head to the little boy’s room during a commercial break and when I came back, there was Willard in my seat in the bleachers with the kids, I walked up to him on live TV and said “hey bub, that’s my seat!” and he laughed and said ‘sit on my knee’, lol

The really neat thing about that?

I wrote to Willard about 10 years ago, said “you probably don’t remember me” and I’ll be damned if he didn’t write back and say “of course I remember you, I stole your seat during the commercial break!”

Radio guys like Ed Walker and Willard Scott were always class acts, always made time for their fans, I hope that when Ed Walker signs off for good, that his passing will be as peaceful as it can be.

Rest in Peace in Advance Ed.

[Jimmy Valentine]

“We are the joy boys of radio, we chase electrons to and fro” Listened to him and Willard Scott on WMAL every afternoon for years on the way home

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland PING!

[GreyFriar]

I remember Ed Walker on the WRC (980 AM) morning drive show in the late 80s until WRC was switched to all sports in the early 90s. Willard Scott would call in from time to time but I was not here in DC for their “Joy Boys” period.

[Vision]

Thank you very much.

[Vision]

Ed's last show...

Walker restarted and continued: “All these years I’ve been trying to play the music and the shows that I think you all enjoyed. Well, tonight I want to turn things around a little bit and I’m going to do my favorite shows because this will be my last ‘Big Broadcast.’ Things come and things go, and right now it’s time for me to go. So we’re going to play some of the shows that I think have special merit, shows that are my personal favorites...”

“Good night, everybody,” Walker said.

And then Ed Walker did something he may have never done in half a million minutes in front of a microphone. He started to cry.

Everyone in Room 623 cried, too.

[Viking2002]

I just now read that he'd done his last show from a hospital bed.......amazing man.

[Vision]

From a hospital room...he wouldn’t do the show laying down...

[WXRGina]

Thanks, TroutStalker and Vision. :-( We’re sad, beyond compare.

[Viking2002]

I know, I read the whole Post article this evening. I'd been under the impression that maybe the chemo and whatnot had just gotten to him, and he was leaving the show to concentrate on being treated. I never knew he was this ill. It does not sound good for a man his age. Prayers up that he can go home.

[Huskrrrr]

I’m getting a little misty myself.

[Arthur McGowan]

I grew up just a couple of miles from the WRC/NBC studio on Nebraska Avenue, which is just a quarter-mile or so from American University.

Ed Walker has been an institution of us native-born Washingtonians.

[golux]

Boy I love this man and this show...
For people who are no longer in the DC area, what is the most reliable way to stream the show?
FR