Who Remembers Paul Harvey?

hold word and practically a part of the family in countless households. Hopkins County listeners heard his broadcasts on KSST 1230 AM Radio for decades. His columns were carried in hundreds of newspapers across the nation. In 2024, television viewers were exposed to his voice, some for the first time, in replayed versions of his 1978 work, “So God Made a Farmer.” I have included his original speech below for National FFA Week.

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, and dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks, and shoe scraps. Who planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, painin’ from tractor back, put in another 72 hours.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to wean lambs and pigs and tend the pinkcombed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark.” So God made a farmer.

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and brake, and disk, and plow, and plant, and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing. Who would laugh, and then sigh, and then reply with smiling eyes, when his son says that he wants to spend his life doing what dad does.

So God made a farmer.

You probably remember Paul Harvey, one of the most widely followed radio and television news commentators. He showed an interest in radio during childhood and in high school was a champion orator, then following military service in WWII, he used his first and middle names as his radio moniker when he went to work for a Chicago radio station in 1944. His program, “Paul Harvey News and Comment” became syndicated by ABC in 1951. From then until 2008, his popular programs and stories reached as many as 24 million people per week, making him a house-