JOHNNY CARSON DEAD AT 79

This one really hurts. Carson was the nightly fixture on late night television. He followed Jack Parr and preceded Letterman& Leno. The Beach Boys sang a song about Mr. Carson on their LOVE YOU album. One of the lines was "and the network breaks your back."

He worked hard, night after night to help end the day and start the night hopefully with viewers slumbering into sleep.

He was born in "outstate" Nebraska, but one of his first gigs was Omaha where I grew up. Carson was a close friend of Merrill Workhoven on WOW radio. Later, Workhoven would get a new convertible from Johnny as a friendship gift. I lived about a block or so from Mr. Workhoven, so it was newsworthy to our area of the city. When I taught at Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, Johnny's mother was in the Methodist eldercare center there in the town. When I was teaching social gerontology, the study of aging and the aged, we would visit that home.

However, I was a Carson fan. I stayed up in those days just to hear his monologue and then go to bed. The night that he retired was a sad one. His last goodbye was to his dead son and the music of "I'll be seeing you."

That was the first step of the end that started with his retirement and the second is his death. He died quietly early on a wintry Sunday morning. His public life was not turbulent as some who are famous, but his personal life was filled with 4 marriages and the death of one adult son.

The last time that I personally saw Mr. Carson was at the opening of HERE'S JOHNNY'S restaurant. He was the front man for a series of sit down fast foods essentially owned by Swanson's dinners. The café was located on Military and the arterial 4 lane highway that snakes from the suburb of Benson to the downtown.

My wife and I stood just a few feet from him. He was at his best and the crowd was so happy to see him and his oldest son. He often surfaced in the news with gifts to his home town. He knew how to close and this is no exception.

Good bye to a landmark in American popular culture.

Good night.