It’s taken me a long time to write this … so hopefully you’ll take the time to read it.  But in case you are a busy person … I’ll give you the short version and the long version.

 Short version first:

I will be ending my daily talk radio show on Monday, January 21, 2013.  It’s finally the right time to put away the headphones.  Not immediately though.  My last day on the air will be inauguration day, January 21, 2013.  After that I’ll be around with daily commentaries, fill-in duties and some special projects.  Am I going to miss my listeners and callers?  Absolutely!  But the time has come …..

Now … the long version:

Yes.  I’m retiring.  And let me tell you, this isn’t easy.   Retiring from my law practice in 1992 was not only easy, but joyous.  I know some contented attorneys, but it was far too stressful for me.  Now I don’t suffer from stress --- I cause it.  I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this to you before, but on one day in 1991 I visited my doctor complaining of chest pains.  He glued all of those little sensors all over my body … looked at the wiggly lines on the screen … and turned to me and said:  “You didn’t have a heart attack.  But something is causing you a lot of stress in your life.  Find out what it is and get rid of it if you want to live to old age.”  That was a Friday.  On the next Saturday I started the process of informing my clients that I was folding my legal tent.  I seriously doubt I would be alive today if I had continued practicing law.  Maybe it can be said that you folks saved my life by listening and making my show such a success for so many years.  Now I’m going to claim what’s left of my years --- decades, hopefully --- for me and my family.

What am I going to miss?  Actually … I’ll miss everything associated with doing a talk radio show … everything, that is, except for the restrictions on my freedom to just pack up and hit the road when I want to.  In recent years, there have been far too many mornings when I would have rather been teeing it up with my friends or heading out on some adventure somewhere.  More on that later if you don’t get bored and move on.

More than anything, though, I’m going to miss the people I work with.  The crew at the Mothership – WSB AM & FM in Atlanta – is absolutely the greatest group of people I’ve ever worked with in my life.  There’s not a mean or divisive one among them.   Weird?  Oh yeah!  We have our share of weirdness.  Let’s see … there’s the sales weasel who collects antique grind stones that weigh hundreds of pounds each.  There’s the traffic reporter who is such a NASCAR fan that his underwear is numbered; “I’ll be wearing the 88 this morning sweetheart.  Could you wash the 24 for me?”  We have the news duo that goes on the air with the most professional news duet I’ve ever heard --- and then argues like a married couple in the newsroom between newscasts.   Our assistant program director always has jelly beans in her office for me.  The lady in charge of production has refrained from killing me – justifiable homicide for sure – for the trouble I cause her getting my spots recorded.  I’m not mentioning names here … because I’ll forget someone.  They’re all wonderful … and they’re all consummate broadcast professionals.  They’ve put up a lot with my presence there for the last 20 years.

There are three names that I must mention.  Belinda Skelton, Cristina Gonzalez and Royal Marshall.  Royal passed away almost 18 months ago.  How I loved that guy.  One of a kind .. and ohhhhhh did he get upset with me from time to time.  Belinda joined me about 18 years ago .. and I feel that she is truly my sister.  Then there’s our Latina Cristina.  She joined the team several years ago and it took all of three weeks for her to become indispensable.  I love those two more than I can say … and if they think I’m going to stop pestering them with text messages and pictures, they’re sadly mistaken.  Not having my daily interactions with Belinda and Cristina is truly going to be the most difficult part of this transition.

Now … Can I just ramble on for a bit? 

Just how in the hell did all this happen?

I hit the ground in Atlanta, Georgia on July 2, 1967 and immediately started looking for a job in broadcasting.  Brilliant move ---- coming to a major market like Atlanta from Bryan-College Station, Texas expecting to land a job in radio or TV.  In the meantime I had to earn a living … so I worked as an assistant jewelry and then carpet buyer at a department store, selling industrial chemicals (soap in a barrel) on the road, working for an employment agency, loading trucks at a freight depot, and writing speeches for the governor of Georgia … all the while pestering every radio and TV station in town for a job --- any job.  Rock & roll or country disk jockey?   I’d done it and would do it again.  Reporter or photojournalist?  Super – I’d been studying and was just a few hours away from a degree in journalism at Texas A&M, so that certainly would work for me.  But …. Nothing.  No phone calls.  Nobody would take a shot.  No major market experience.  Their loss.

In the meantime I had become a steady listener to a new talk station in Atlanta, and in particular to a talk show host by the name of Herb Elfman.  Herb was a conservative from California who was making waves on WRNG (Ring) radio in the late 1960s.  I listened and became a caller.  Then I started having regular lunches with Elfman, and would attend his speeches.  This talk radio thing just fascinated me.  THAT’s what I wanted to do, but the WRNG management wouldn’t give me the time of day.

Then it happened.  It was May of 1970.  Elfman made a weekend trip to California to try to reconcile with his estranged wife and talk her into coming back to Atlanta.  She told him no.  He pulled a gun out of his pocket and shot himself in the head.  DRT. 

I heard the story of Elfman’s death on the news late that Sunday night.  The next morning, I showed up before sunrise at the WRNG studios.  I’ll save the details for the book I’m currently writing – but they moved the afternoon guy to Elfman’s spot in the morning, and gave me 90 minutes in the afternoon to show my stuff.  A few weeks later they moved me to the mornings …. And 42 years later I’m still at it.

There’s a lot I can say about my talk radio career.  Some of it is even interesting.  Most of that is in the book, but there’s one thing I want to include here --- one story about being fired, and then making the most of it. 

In my third year of talking on Ring Radio, the owners hired a new program director.  This guy knew virtually nothing about radio in general, and talk radio in particular, so he started calling other PDs for advice.  Someone purporting to be an expert told my new boss that no host should be kept on the air in any one market for more than three years.  So … my three years were up and I was fired.  They gave me six weeks of pay, allowed me to use a company car, and told me to go find another gig.

I made some audition tapes of my show and mailed them special delivery to about a dozen radio stations all the way up the East Coast.  Then Donna and I got in the car and started driving.  Every day I would hit one of these stations; sometimes two.  When the program directors would even talk to me, the answer was a polite turn-down.  Finally I reached the last station on the list, WGY, the GE flagship 50,000 watt barnburner, in Albany, New York.  Donna and I checked into a Holiday Inn in Schenectady and I headed to WGY to talk to the boss.  Two hours later I had an offer.  WGY wanted me to do the evening talk show!  This was 50,000 watts, not Ring’s 1000 watts, and I would be heard throughout the Northeast!  I don’t think my feet touched the ground once on the way back to the Holiday Inn to tell Donna the news.

As I walked into the room, ready to tell The Queen the good news, I saw her standing at the window, shoulders stooped.  She was looking out on a perfectly miserable cold and rainy day in Schenectady.  The turned to me and I saw tears in her eyes.  I asked her what was wrong.  She then uttered five words that changed the course of our lives:  “I hate this damned place.”  I was ready to tell her I had a new gig!  Instead, her words made my heart sink.  “So do I,” I said.  “Tell you what.  I’ll go downstairs right now and check out.  We’ll head to New York City, stay a day or two to see the place, and head back to Atlanta.  I’ll get a job and enter law school.”  She started repacking her clothes, and I headed downstairs.  I found a pay phone and called the WGY program director to tell him that I just wasn’t going to be able to take the job.  We checked out, spent a night in New York City, and then drove straight through to Atlanta.  That fall I entered law school, selling life insurance and real estate to make ends meet.  At one time Donna and I worked side-by-side at the U.S. Postal Service Bulk Mail Facility overnights.  I would go to school during the day while she worked a second job.  Our daughter, Laura, spent an inordinate amount of time in day care.

Finally .. about fourteen months into this schedule .. the call came from WRNG.  They had made a horrible mistake, and wondered if I would come back.  I told them that the show would have to make room for my law studies, and they would have to double what I was making when they fired me.  Deal.

I worked at WRNG until the early 1980s … switched over to WGST radio … and finally ended up with WSB (The Mothership) in the fall of 1992.  

It would be over 25 years before I ever told Donna that I walked away from that job offer in Schenectady. 

So now .. after 42 years of talking .. after hundreds of thousands of phone calls .. the time has come; the time to turn the page.

I’m not really retiring … exactly.  Let’s just say I’m going to stop doing a daily talk show.  I’ll still be around this WSB AM & FM for as long as they want me.  I’ll be doing daily commentaries and contributing to the world-famous Boortz.com website with a (daily, I hope) blog.  I’ll also be WSB’s official fill-in for hosts who take vacations or need time off. 

Yes .. this is a dream job.  But it’s very restricting .. very demanding of time.  I had actually planned to retire at the end of 2009, but after the election of Barack Obama several people, Sean Hannity being paramount, convinced me to stay for three more years.  Those three years are up.

The Queen and I share a passion --- a passion for travel.  The problem is, you really can’t go very far with a one-week vacation; and two-week vacations are simply frowned upon for broadcasters.  I think I’ve only had three two-week vacations in my entire 42 years.

Well .. there was that one six-month time off the air.  That’s when I declined a new contract with WGST and signed on with WSB in 1992.  I had a six-month non-compete clause that delayed the start of my WSB show until March 1, 1993.  Interestingly enough, WGST had hired Sean Hannity from Huntsville, Alabama to compete against me when I returned to the air.  WGST did something else.  They sued me.  They sued me and WSB because I never gave them a chance to counter the WSB offer.  Because of that suit, I couldn’t spend that six-month non-compete period traveling the country with Donna in our new RV as we had planned.  Instead I had to return to Atlanta for depositions, hearings and other matters related to the suit.  WGST knew they were going to lose.  You simply cannot enforce a non-compete that is unlimited as to territory or time.  Their best hope, and their true goal, was to punish me and to harass WSB by delaying my return to the air.  They failed at that as well.  Nice folks.

Anyways…….. In the past ten years Donna has visited such places as Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Tahiti, Singapore, Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Morocco … and God knows where else; all without me.  (Snif, snif).   Why?  Because I couldn’t get the time off, that’s why. 

Now I can.   

You’ve heard me refer to the BoortzBus. The Boortz Family, me, my wife and our daughter, Laura, have been vacationing in motor homes for 40 years.  There are some good stories there, but you’ll have to read the book.  Anyway … we’ve always been somewhat limited to the Southeastern United States for our trips because or time constraints.  Well, now those time constraints are going to go away.  So last February, The Queen and I traveled to Sanford, Florida to visit the manufacturing facility of Millennium Luxury Coaches.  That’s where the BoortzBus was built for us!  No … I not going to show you pictures of ours (wouldn’t be prudent), but if you click on the link you will get an idea of what our home for 2013 and much of 2014 looks like.  Actually, if you look around the Millennium website you can see part of the interior.  But you can’t recognize me on the road with a picture of the interior so you won’t have the chance to flip me off as you drive on by.

Yes, the BoortzBus is equipped for broadcast.  This means that when I do fill in for Herman or Eric, you’ll really have no idea where I am!  Ahhhhh … the wonders of technology.  Itinerary?  Next year we plan to go from Atlanta toward Southern California, up the coast to Denali National Park in Alaska, back down to Tahoe, Glacier National Park, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain National Park, and then up again to Banff and Whistler in Canada.  Eastward to Mackinac, Toronto, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and down through Maine, the East Coast and back home to Naples.  Gonna burn a lot of diesel.  I’ll be Tweeting, blogging and sending picture all along the way.  Once we get home, it will be time to pack for a trip to Antarctica.  Do you see how hard all of this would be to do with a daily radio show?

Are they easy to drive?  I don’t know.  Ask The Queen … she does the driving.

Why make the announcement now?

I told the folks at WSB about a year ago that I would be retiring at the end of 2012. 

Actually … I had originally planned to do this two years ago.  Sean Hannity stopped me.  He told me that I couldn’t – or shouldn’t – make my international travel plans until all opportunities had been exhausted to make sure the people knew the truth about Barack Obama before the next presidential election.  So .. the last two years brought to you courtesy of Sean Hannity.  He couldn’t talk me into any more years, though he tried.

Much discussion ensured as to just when to make the announcement.  I asked them for a June date .. and they agreed.  Here’s why.  It’s an election year .. probably the most critical presidential election year in the last 100 years.  We have an incumbent president running an anti-capitalist reelection campaign in the nation with the highest standard of living in the world – a standard of living brought on by economic liberty and capitalism.  Try to make sense out of THAT!

Right now this election is a toss-up.  Either side could take it.  But If Obama were to win and I was, one month later, to announce my retirement, there would be no way in the world I could escape the accusation that I was bailing out because Obama won.  By announcing my intentions now I avoid that scenario.

And there’s something else.  I’m just through paying taxes at the level I’ve been paying.  I don’t need to cite numbers here .. but when you pay federal income taxes in the dollar amount I’ve been paying for over 20 years – and you have some leftist hack telling me that I’m not paying my fair share and that I should have to pay more, my response is not only no, but hell no.  Add to this the fact that Obama flat out told me that “… I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”  Well, if our esteemed president thinks that I’ve made enough money, and if I can comfortably stop making money now … then I’ll quit!  Instead of getting more money out of me with his tax-the-rich schemes, he’s going to get quite a bit less.  There’s a lot to love about what I’ve been doing for 42 years --- but to have 40%+ of my hours spent working every year lost to local, state and federal taxes … time to all but disappear from the tax rolls.  Actually .. that really does make retirement sweeter.  Hey Obama!  You think I’m not paying my fair share?  Well … watch this!

So now .. it’s on with the show.  Business as usual.  The Year of Talking Dangerously will continue, only now I may refer to it from time-to-time as “getting in the last word.”  Only now you understand it will be followed by The Year of Keeping My Mouth Shut.