In response to several requests, I am posting below the remarks I made at the funeral of veteren broadcaster, Jud Collins, on January 2, 2009.
There was a Broadway show in the ‘50’s called “Mr. Wonderful.” It was about a performer and his mentor. There is a song in that show titled “Without You I’m Nothing.” The opening lines of that song goes like this: “How does one man say to another, things he’d tall his dad or his brother. I can think of one way not any other: I love you. Honest I do.”
I loved Jud Collins. I never would have made it without him. In 1970, when he retired from Channel 4, he lobbied hard for me to replace him as host of the Noon Show. Some people at the top thought the job should go to someone else. Jud wouldn’t give in. Eventually Jud won, and I took over the show—and all good things came to me from that.
I’ll never for get the day ten years earlier when he hired me. A friend set up an audition for me as a singer on the Noon Show. My wife Jana came with me to the studio. She was eight months very much pregnant. When I finished singing my song, Jud came out of the control room laughing his head off. I thought I had failed. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Son, anyone who would pick that song with his wife sitting there as pregnant as she is deserves a break. The song I had sung was called, “It Could Happen to You.”
For the next ten years I went to Jud Collins University. I studied Jud like his students studied Plato. I watched how he prepared, how he interviewed, how he dealt with all kinds of guests. And I watched him deal with the internal politics at the station and how he made decisions. I used to drop by his office before the show, and when it was time to go to the studio, he’d say, “Okay, set your grin. It’s time to play television.
Jud taught me that being on television is a job, not your life. We used to go to lunch often. Jud wouldn’t talk shop-talk, or about the news, or the business. His talked about his family. How proud he was of his children. And how he loved his wife, Lu. It is common knowledge that Jud could have gone on to greater heights in and out of broadcasting. And I know he had been asked to run for political office. But in the interest of his family, he stayed in Nashville.
Jud Collins possessed a quality rare in today’s broadcasting environment: taste. He was the epitome of class, of civility. He had a confident reserve. A bit of a swagger without arrogance. A head-turner when he walked into a room. A knowing without showing off. A refinement without being an elitist. There was a special light about this man that I have rarely seen in others.
There is a word that I think sums up Jud Collins. The word is mensch. A mensch is a person who tries to do the right thing. It’s been said that if man is God’s gift to the world, being a mensch is man’s gift back to God. Jud, you were a mensch. A good man. God used you in many ways, and you did your best to return the gift. |
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