NPR's Paul Brown Remembers His Friend And Mentor Carl Kasell

NPR's very first Morning Edition broadcast took place back in 1979. The news announcer on that day was Carl Kasell, and it was a post he would occupy for the next thirty years. At an age when many choose retirement, the North Carolina native added a second career as the official scorekeeper of the satirical radio quiz show, Wait, Wait…Don't Tell Me!

On Tuesday night, Carl Kasell died at the age of 84.

Former WFDD News Director Paul Brown worked alongside Kasell for years as a Morning Edition newscaster for NPR in Washington, D.C. He shares this remembrance of his friend and mentor with David Ford.

Interview Highlights

What was Carl Kasell like as a colleague at NPR?

I found him quite wonderful to work with. He was sort of the grand old man in a sense of the newsroom. Carl had a certain calm to him. He was very steady. Some of the folks used to call him "Steady Carl." Nothing would ruffle his feathers. If a story broke, he would simply deal with it. If it broke one minute before airtime, he would deal with it. I never saw Carl excited or agitated or in any way anxious or hysterical about getting a newscast on the air. It was amazing. He was a mentor to everyone in that newsroom. He set an example that I wanted to follow and I think everyone else wanted to follow in terms of straightforward story structure and writing outstanding delivery that anyone could hear whether they were in a noisy kitchen or an automobile or a quiet room. You could hear what Carl was saying. He knew how to use his voice, and [had] a sense of commitment to the story, so that you wanted to keep listening.

Just one on one with Carl Kasell, what kind of a guy was he?

I met him first I think at a public radio conference when I was working at WFDD, and then I invited him to come to the station to visit for a couple of our fundraisers, and he did. He was right from the start interested in the person he was talking with. So, when I first phoned him up to invite him to the radio station, he was collegial as though we had known one another for years. When I met him at a public radio conference, same thing. He was open, very kind, generous, willing to talk about the craft of producing newscasts and making it all happen. And when I was working with him in Washington Carl was quiet. He actually didn't speak very much in the newsroom during the mornings because we had a lot of work to do. He was neighborly. He was very kind. He was always ready to assist a younger colleague with any need. He also set an example as a calm, cool collected newsman.

Carl Kasell grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Did he ever show the North Carolina side of his personality?

Well, yeah, he had sort of a small-town charm. He had a southern North Carolina charm to him. He was so neighborly that it was legendary within the NPR building. He was just delightful to be around with everyone. He would sometimes wander around the building in between a newscast or, at the end of his day in particular, he might go over to Morning Edition and chat with the folks he'd known there for so many years. He was the first Morning Edition newscaster and there were some long timers there and he would always go to see them. And he was very loyal to North Carolina.

 

And funny?

Well, with Carl, his humor was often very dry. One of the things I remember about Carl was, when we were both working on Morning Edition newscasts, it seems as though he was always the first person in the newsroom. You know he used to say that he would wake up at 1:05 a.m. and people would say, "Why 1:05 a.m. instead of 1:00 a.m.?" and he would say, "It just seems so early,"  or he'd say, "because I want to sleep in."

What will you miss most about Carl Kasell?

I will miss what I've been missing for the past several years since I left NPR and came back home to Winston-Salem, which is a mentoring example of how to practice radio journalism and how to treat people. He treated people well. That's really why Carl was so beloved. Yes, his voice was recognizable, but one of the reasons it was recognizable and beloved is that people could hear in that voice that this was a genuinely decent, kind, caring person. It came through in his vocal delivery and in the way he wrote his stories. You could depend on Carl Kasell. You always had that feeling. When people encountered him, he was unfailingly gracious, patient, and decent. I will miss that.