It’s so much more than the first voice you hear every workday morning over the past forty some years. This Gift.
Carl Grapentine, morning guy on Chicago’s WFMT is calling it a career. Friday is his last show. Last meeting of the “5:58 Club” called to order with his warm and cheery voice biding all of us rising up from dreams, “Good MORN-ing!” Just before the clock chimes 6:00a.m.
That voice now blended with an earlier generation of WFMT elders. Names like Norm Pelligrini, Marty Robbins, Ray Nordstrand and of course Studs Terkel. WFMT playing classical music with a wink and a smile. Never taking itself too seriously. Bach and Berlioz and Wagner and then Lennon and McCartney on their birthdays of course.
As a Lifetime Listener
I am 10, maybe 11, smelling bacon, breaking off a piece of my sister’s share. My parents sitting at the breakfast table. The darkness outside making the kitchen even warmer, reverberating harmony with the Bach, the mathematical elegance of the Bach as it merges with the poetry of the heavenly stories he’s telling. My Dad with his engineering mind and Mom with her lyrical soul. The Bach reflected in the family across the fields of years. That’s where Carl came from.
And then another family. My own. A smaller family. Where there was always room for Carl at the musical table. Across birthdays and especially holidays. Through all the years. It is unfathomable to imagine a Labor Day or a Christmas without his gift of musical guidance. The emptiness rises up with the question of whether the music will fill the void. You think “Of course it will.” And THAT is when the nature of his even larger gift became clear.
This larger gift was in the way he said goodbye.
He announced the retirement in February. Naming this last Friday in July as this last show. And now for the past few weeks or so, he’s done the math. Counted up the shows past and shows yet to go.
He kept us with him. Every step. Never faltering. In time with the rhythm of the heavenly clock, he showed us a classy, strong way to say goodbye. His gift wasn’t just to bring us the music. That would have been enough. But his gift was even larger. Even deeper.
His larger gift was to sing with us as we all waited for the music to go quiet.
His gift was to show us how to say goodbye.
Goodbye Carl. And thank you. Thank you for everything.