Pete Wilson 1945-2007

Today I learned that Pete Wilson, my favorite talk radio host, had a fatal heart attack on Friday night while undergoing hip replacement surgery. I've been feeling vaguely despondent all day.
This has surprised me. After all, though I've listened to him often, I didn't really know him.

I met him only once, at a public event. He, along with 4 or 5 other KGO hosts, were on stage at the Marin Civic Center. They were answering audience questions and getting into hostile verbal exchanges between themselves. The audience was mostly hostile to Pete, who is not the former California governor though he shares the name, and another talk show host. My experience of Pete was as he portrayed himself, politically moderate and open to consideration of diverse ideas. To some in multi-mega "liberal" Marin county, where "liberal" too often means unavailable to consider alternative ideas, Pete's viewpoints were anathema. The loudmouths in the crowd joyfully shouted him down. It was really quite brutal. He was visibly distressed by the mob mentality, though he didn't back down. I think that aside from the personal nature of the rudeness, he was upset at the mindless arrogance of the mob in full armament against reason. It was an event to which he said he'd never subject himself again. At the end, as people were filtering out, I approached him on stage in a way that now seems stupid. "Yay Pete Wilson," I yelled. He turned to me and we exchanged a few words. In retrospect, I wish I had shared with him my view of the mob in a more adult way, but I think he got the message.

I don't remember whether or not I heard any of Pete's last broadcast on Wednesday. I read that he had some concerns about his upcoming operation and listened to a bit of his opening monologue that was posted on the web. Listening to his concerns about the operation was chilling. He mentioned that friends at the gym he went to told him of a man who had a fatal stroke 2 days after such an operation. Pete was analyzing his anxiety and making fun of it. He pointed out that 300,000 such operations take place yearly in the U.S. and few have any complications.

Pete was probably in the hands of the best and brightest. His operation was done at Stanford Medical Center. For much of the day I've wondered about my sense of loss. I've felt disoriented, confused. I didn't really know him and yet I did. He was a part of my life. I would postpone doing certain routine tasks, such as washing dishes or folding laundry, so that I'd be able to listen to him in the background. In a way, I knew him, though he didn't know me. And, in a way, he knew me in the sense that he knew he had many listeners and tried to make himself understood by them. He knew that people could be "thundering idiots," but he appealed to their intelligence. He was intelligent, knowledgeable, clear, interesting, and funny. Here is another story about him.

I've lost a person who has had a presence in my life.