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Well, hi everybody. This is Bill Owen. And uh at the ripe old age of 95, I don't feel half that age, but uh I've been very blessed with good health. And a little bit of a legacy here for my descendants and relatives and friends and any other interlopers who might be listening in. Just uh talk a little bit about uh how I came to this place in my life. I've lived a joyful, blessed life, thanks to my dear God and uh my Savior Jesus Christ. Well, uh where do we start? I was born in uh 1931, February the first, and the family joke was uh bills always come on the first of the month. So that was my start in uh Grand Forks, North Dakota, which was a town of about uh twenty thousand or so back at that time. It's grown considerably now over the decades, of course. And uh my dad was uh a great track star in both high school and college. I saw some photos of him where he was uh running uh the 440, and he would be maybe 10 or 15 yards ahead of his nearest competitor. He was very, very fleet on foot, very proud of him, became a a well-known attorney in North Dakota, practiced with his brother Henry Grattan Owen, his uh older brother, and uh it was Owen and Owen, and their secretary was their sister Winifred, who uh also had uh a law degree, and that was uh uh a great little place to visit once in a while, go up in the in the bank building and visit my dad in his office. And then uh my mother was uh a roadie, R O H D E, Else Roadie, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1893. Dad was born in 1890, and mom was uh she became a an English teacher, but uh a very uh ironic start. When she went to school, Milwaukee was a very German-speaking city. A lot of people spoke only German, including my mother when she's a little girl. She went to first grade in Milwaukee and uh couldn't speak any English. But uh sh over the years she had no accent whatsoever. As I say, she was an English instructor, uh part-time teacher, uh a home ec graduate, and she used to oversee uh kitchens and state fairs and things like that. So very proud of my uh my parents and my brother Jack was uh he was about three years older, and uh Jack came along and uh he developed into being uh quite an executive in the advertising business in both Chicago and later New York, Footcone and Building Agency, one of the top advertising agencies in the world. And uh well, very, very proud of him. And he also on the sideline dabbled in acting to the point that he did uh several commercials and appeared in in uh several movies, a handful of movies, not a leading role, but uh I was proud of him, and a few television clips we had. And then along came uh Tudor, the first one. And Tudor, I was so proud of him, and uh, even though he was he was the oldest, I was closer to him at the time. As the years went by, Jack and I became very close, but went to college together. But uh Tudor, uh well, he was actually Owen Tudor Owen Jr. My dad's name was it's a Welsh name, and the tradition in Wales often is have the same first name as the last name. And uh Tudor Jr., very proud of him, especially when he joined the Navy when he was a teenager, and uh during the fighting in the Pacific, he was he saw little combat, the Philippine Islands, and he returned unscathed, thank heaven, from the war. And uh while he was home on leave one time, well his his original training was in you wouldn't think he'd go to the Navy, uh for Navy training, you go to Idaho, Camp Farragut, but they had a lake there, and he did his uh boot training there, and then shipped out overseas. But on leave, as I say, he came to my uh eighth grade class, and I was so proud of him, he wore his uniform, and he talked to the kids. They uh they were full of questions about what it was like to be in the Navy, and I I was, as I say, very, very proud of him. And it turned out that uh he's the one that inspired me in things that led to my career. He was interested in the same things like baseball and football and uh uh old radio programs and movies and things like that. So he was the one that really led me into my uh little trivia career, which we'll talk about in a moment. And let's see now. Uh oh, there was uh my grandfather, on the paternal side, was born in Belfast, Ireland, John Hayes Owen, and he became an attorney. He went to law school, Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, migrated to the US, to Canada first, then came down into what was then Dakota Territory before they split into two states, North and South Dakota, and he was a practicing attorney. And there was a magical moment one time when uh he was at a small town in Dakota Territory where a group of Indians, nomads, were passing through. They had a tendency to set up their tents and then move on after a few days. And a bunch of uh whites were gathered outside the tent mocking and taunting the Indians, and uh there was a squaw out there having dinner over the fire, getting things ready, and they were uh one one of the guys was very inebriated. He had a long pole and he he was tugging at her skirts to embarrass her, and the chief came out and said, Leave my squaw alone, or I'll shoot you. Well, they didn't believe, and they just laughed in their drunken stupor, and uh continued to laugh, and finally they continued it. He came out with a shotgun, and sure enough he blew them away. Well, the one man he killed. And uh everybody thought, well, oh, he's a Native American, he has no chance he'll be convicted and and executed. No, my dad took the case and defended this Indian, and believe it or not, he he got him off in court based on the fact that he was uh uh he had the same rights as any white man, and that was kind of shocking to people of those days. And uh when the verdict was brought in that he was not convicted, the courtroom erupted in uh in cheers for my my grandfather, John Hayes Owen. So, in a sense, he was uh an early civil rights attorney. His wife was also an attorney, Estelle Stevens. In fact, she was the first woman to practice law before the uh South Dakota Supreme Court later on. And let's see, dad was born in uh in uh in South Dakota. Let me think of the name. Millbank, Milbank, South Dakota, which turned out to be the home later of America Legion Junior Baseball, which I played a lot. And there was Uncle Gratt, Henry Grattan Owen, he named for a famous uh British attorney, Henry Grattan, and he was dad's partners, I mentioned in law. He became assistant attorney general under Tom Clark in the Truman administration. And uh there was a sister Ruth and Francis, who was a Haley school teacher, and uh they had another brother, uh Art, who who went out west to uh the state of Washington and worked in the railroad business. And uh he had uh he had several children, including Art Junior, who became a P-51 pilot in the United States Army Air Corps, and he was actually shot down on a on a run over France, and uh he he lived to tell the tale, he parachuted down and he escaped with the help of of French farmers and eventually got back to England to continue the war. And yet he became an instructor at the Air Force Academy later on. He had a brother Bob and a sister Dorothy and and Alice Joy, who married uh uh a wonderful aviator who fought in both uh uh World War II, Korean War. He just missed World War II with actually the Korean War and uh Vietnam. Uh he played football for the great army teams during World War II. At one incident, he remembered he got he tackled Doc Blanchard, who was the star fullback for West Point and in practice, and he was dazed, and he he looked up and he saw them bringing a stretcher out on the field, and he said, Oh good, they're gonna carry me off. And they went right by him and picked up Doc Blanchard, kind of ignored, kind of ignored uh Jacksell. Well, let's see, we talk about uh sports, mentioning my dad being a great athlete. I was a fairly decent athlete. I I was a walk-on at the University of Southern California in basketball in the freshman team. I wore the old uniform 11 of Bill Sharman, who's an American superstar both in college and the pros. So I had a very brief career there. I was considered a good shooter, and I used in practice one time. I have no proof, no witnesses, but I I did make 113 free throws in a row. That was uh kind of a thrill for me. When I got over 100, uh my heart was pounding. I said, How far can I go? The funniest thing that ever happened was I used to play horse, basketball warm-up game, and this fellow was a former member of the Washington Generals, who was the white team that played against the Holland Globetrotters on tours. And yeah, he would always beat me in horse, but this one day I was really in bad shape. I was I was down to my last letter, and he went to mid-court, beyond mid-court, to the opposite free throw lawn and fired away, and bang bang, it went in. And he picked up his gym bag and trotted off. But I saw him peeking through the window just to make sure that I missed the shot. I strolled down there and looked around. I said, Well, should I heave it like a like a basket, like a football, or two-handed shot? What you so I just led away a two-handed shot, and you wouldn't believe this, but it banged in off the backboard and and it went in, and he was so angry he walked in and slammed down his gym bag. And and when I was so inspired by then that I I finished, I came all the way up. I I just couldn't lose after that. That was that was a wonderful moment. Another sport we used to play was marbles, that was a big thing in grade school, and uh I wasn't very good at it, but I did have my favorite shooters and so on. And my favorite game was pothole, which you would dig little holes if you could in the in the spring and fall. You couldn't do it in the mid-winter in North Dakota, and you had to advance, and once you advanced to a certain point you were poisoned, and if you hit the other shooter, why they were out. So it was you know, I was fairly good at that game, but not good at regular marbles. Uh I took part in a couple of tournaments, but I always got knocked out in the first round. And uh, well, you know, I used to play in the sandbox, they said, and uh pretending I was a baseball announcer. So I was interested in baseball very early. I was a member of the kids' novel gang at Grand Forks, the Grand Forks Chiefs Class D in those days, in the old Northern League. Big fan of them. And uh one year 1940 won the uh the championship and the playoffs, so we were very proud of the Grand Forks Chiefs. And uh well that playing in the sandbox as an announcer led on to my bonnet being announcer, I used to listen to all the radio programs of those days, and uh the hero the heroes to me were uh were the announcers. I used to listen to them. Uh Harlow Wilcox for Fibrey and Molly, Don Wilson for Jack Benny, and so on and so forth. They're wonderful announcers. And years later, when I was at the University of Southern California, and I was uh I was a pre-med major, my mother wanted me to be a doctor, but I my heart was always in radio, and I used to go up to uh Sunset and Vine, NBC Studios, and watch these performers that I grew up listening to. It was such a thrill and I admired the announcers to come out, and I I used to say to myself, I'd like to be one of those people, but I was kind of shy and I had to tell myself, if you're gonna do that, you you have to become more of an expert, extrovert. They would come out on the stage and and warm up the audiences and so on. They had such great confidence, and I was uh I was aspiring to do that, and I I eventually switched my major, much to my mom's uh consternation, and and uh I got into the field of radio and had a had a marvelous career and uh started out uh broadcasting ball games and music for K U S C F M and KTR U in uh Los Angeles campus stations. And uh my first professional job in my hometown of Bismarck, which I moved to from Grand Forks seventh grade. I I worked on the radio station there and and became a sports director and did play by play and became a a uh a character on television called Marshall Ball, Marshall Bill and had a wonderful wonderful career entertaining the kiddies. I would talk to the kids, interview them, and then show uh uh either Looney Tune cartoons or or a western like uh hop along Cassidy. And uh uh one one lady one time, one of my fans, she was a doctor's wife in Bismarck, she came from from the east east coast, I think from Philadelphia, and she had her friends gather around when I opened the birthday book, and I used to say, Well, uh, it's uh little Johnny Jones of Steel North Dakota's ten years old today, and I'd turn the page and read another birthday name. I never rehearsed them, and one day they conspired through this lady the doctor got the secretary to slip us a Playboy centerfold in in, and uh they all sat around and laughed and watched my reaction to us when I turned the page. I guess I was uh was almost speechless for uh a rare occasion. Oh those are those are some of the great memories. And uh got to talk about my uncle John. He taught me cribbage and checkers, things like that. He's often a babysitter, wonderful man. He worked at the Grand Forest Herald as as a printer for some 40 years. And uh John was born in Hammond, Wisconsin, and I remember one of the jokes he told me was was, What's the only state mentioned in the Bible? Of course, nobody nobody knew. And he he said, Arkansas. We say, how could it be? He says, Well, Noah looked out of his ark and saw so we kind of it was a kind of a groaner, but I've I remembered that over the years. Uh I was a good student, but I did play a prank one day on my ninth grade teacher, Rita Murphy, and uh I think the subject was Julius Caesar, which we studied that year, the novel by uh the I mean the play by William Shakespeare. And she had a habit of saying, You cannot do two things at once and do both well. That was her that was her mantra. And uh I kind of conspired with myself. I I printed it, pretended one day of looking out the window like I was daydreaming, and sure enough she looked over and said, Billy Owen, uh what was I just talking about? And I told her exactly what she had said. She was getting all ready to say, you cannot do two things at once and do both well. It stopped her in her tracks. I felt a little mean, I thought it kind of ruined her thing, but that was that was another great memory. Well, let's see, uh what else can we talk about remembering the old days? Uh timing was everything in my career after after working Grand Forks. I went in the Air Force, I was an aviation cadet, San Antonio Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, and that the Korean War ended, and uh they got rid of all the all the people who were wanted to be flyers in the uh Air Force. So they didn't know what to do with us, and they shipped us overseas, and my job mainly was to sweep out warehouses. And I was listening to AFM, the American Forces Network, which started during the war, Battlefield Radio Station, to entertain the troops, and I I heard the broadcast doing baseball games, so I auditioned. I went to Frankfurt to audition, and uh I gave a little routine and he hired me. The timing, as I say, is everything in this business. Bruce Miller had been there for four years, and he was leaving the service to come back, and they were actually looking for somebody at that time, and there was only one opening for an Air Force man, the rest are all army. And you talk about being fortuitous. That was that was wonderful. So I had a great experience doing that. Had a nightly sports show during the weeks, during the week, and uh had my own German chauffeur, drove me around where I broadcast football, baseball, basketball games. That was another great experience. Uh I used my voice in another way one time when I was uh in 1942, 11 years old, and I envied my brother Jack, had a uh used to sell newspapers. I couldn't wait to get out on the street corner and emulate the newsboys used to hear on radio. X tree, read all about it, and so on and so forth. So that day the headline was uh Nazis cross the river dawn, read all about it, get your gray. And a few minutes later, a dentist from across the street came over and said, How many papers you got left? I said, Well, whatever I had, six or eight. He said, I want them all. So I said, Oh, are you interested in the story? He said, No, but you're disturbing me. I I I want to get them and shut you up. I'll I'll I'll to this day I still take it as a compliment. Well, let's see, we've talked about a lot of the relative Gratton, Henry Grattan. I mentioned uh dad's law partner, and uh who else have we left out? Well, we come down to more modern days, and uh I have two great grandsons as of now, uh Bowen and Austin, so proud of them in Charleston, South Carolina, and Jessica, my uh granddaughter, uh son of Richard, my son, and he she's married to Sean McBride, who played shortstop for University of Southern Car South Carolina, almost slipped University of South Carolina Gamecocks. And let's see, uh oh yeah, Jeffrey, can't forget Jeffrey, my grandson, and he became a pilot, uh an airline pilot, and he flies all over the nation and the world for that matter. And his lovely wife Jenna. So I have a a lot of people in my family I'm very, very proud of. And I have so many, so many fantastic memories. I'm sure a lot of things I'll think of later that should have passed along to. But this is just uh kind of a uh uh insight into what my life has been like and and how I reached this point in life. So uh I wanna wish everybody out there listening uh the best of everything. I hope your life is is as much fun as mine has been. And now for now it's Bill Owen signing off.