The Last Of Her Kind

I almost forgot to mention one that I saw in yesterday's Cincinnati Enquirer.

They had an article about Bonnie Lou, now 83, the last survivor of a group of performers from a legendary variety show started by Ruth Lyons.

For those of you who are not from the Cincinnati area and who were born after about 1970 or so, you have NO idea how popular this group was in the '60's and '70's.

Every year my grandmother and great-aunt would take me down to the Bob Braun Show, the successor to Ruth Lyon's 50/50 Club on the 31st of December when I was a little boy.

The second-to-last to pass was Marian Spellman, who departed the planet in January.

I met Marian Spellman twice. Once as a little boy in the audience of The Bob Braun Show and once as a young operations engineer working on "behind the scenes" elements of the first few episodes of The Jerry Springer Show.

As I was walking with Marian Spellman down the hallways of WLWT's Crosley Square studios, I couldn't help but think that I was playing Data to her Dr. McCoy from the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The first few episodes of Springer were recorded in the same studio that Bob Braun used.

Although, in this case, somehow I'm guessing Ruth Lyons and Bob Braun will be remembered quite a while after Springer is long forgotten ...