PORT ANGELES — He’s interviewed between 35,000 and 40,000 people.
But when asked who impressed him most, public radio host Bob Edwards didn’t pause for a second.
Speaking to 180 attendees of the American Conversations program Thursday night at Peninsula College, Edwards hailed a California priest: the Rev. Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles, a Jesuit who helps young people get out of gangs.
“He’s interested in their lives” as much as their souls.
With a diner, a food truck, a cafe and other enterprises, Homeboy Industries has been successful, Edwards said, adding that Boyle is the ex-gangsters’ champion and that he knows how to speak up for his homeboys and -girls.
“I’ve had two full hours with him, and he’s never repeated a story,” Edwards said.
“I send him money . . . I love the man and what he’s doing.”
Fundraising banquet
Edwards, who came to Port Angeles from his home in Washington, D.C., to be the speaker at the Peninsula College Foundation’s annual fundraising banquet, answered questions from his audience for 40 minutes.
That was after he gave a speech just as long in which he talked about the super-rich having far too much influence on elected leaders, CEOs making hundreds of times the earnings of their workers, how smartphones have revolutionized news gathering and college becoming the exclusive home of the wealthy.
“That makes the work of the [Peninsula College] Foundation all that more important” for awarding scholarships to the non-rich, Edwards said.
So far in the 2013-14 academic year, the foundation has given $166,128 in student support and another $66,649 to special programs, many of which are open to the community at large.
The previous academic year saw $221,336 in scholarships and $62,752 for programs.
Edwards lamented many things Thursday night.
Billionaires buying politicians outright. Journalists spending too much time verifying Twitter tweets instead of doing original reporting. Student loan debt averaging $29,400 per graduate in 2012. “Self-serving bloviation” flooding Congress.
‘Lived a dream’
But when he got talking about his life as an interviewer — on NPR’s “Morning Edition” from 1979 through 2004 and on his own “Bob Edwards Show” for the past decade — he showed nothing but joy.
“For the last 10 years, I’ve lived a dream,” Edwards said.
“I had a staff of nine. We interviewed who we felt like interviewing,” from authors, artists and actors to people like Boyle.
His producers have found “younger people I wouldn’t have known about,” added Edwards, 67.
But “The Bob Edwards Show,” broadcast on the North Olympic Peninsula via KPLU-FM, has been canceled.
SiriusXM, the satellite radio network behind it, stopped new production and put the show in reruns as of Sept. 26, and did not respond to repeated requests for comment about that move.
“I am sorry about what’s happened,” Edwards said.
“But given what we’ve had the last 10 years, I can’t complain.”
Edwards harkened back to a point in history, one that he, a Kentuckian who remembers the Jim Crow era, considers a bright spot: the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Working together
The act was the result of a Congress that worked together.
“Why can’t we do that in more areas?” he asked.
“Why can’t people work together for the common good? Why wouldn’t they want to do that?”
Someone is paying them off to do otherwise, is all he can figure.
Finally, Edwards was asked about his most memorable moments.
Doing the talk-up to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 was one.
Anchoring NPR’s live reports on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was another. Edwards and crew went for five hours without a script that day.
Through it all, Edwards has lived to bring people the news.
“Forty-six years, and every day has been better than the day before,” he said.
But “I want to have more fun.”
Gazing out at the crowd, Edwards quipped, “I need a job, if you know anybody.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
