Reece and Emma Gardner/Facebook

When I received a call from Reece Gardner in 2009 I’d never been on television before. 

I’m not counting the time I along with 50 or so of my La Grange Elementary School classmates stood with Oscar Herring to say ‘GOOD MORNING AMERICA’ to David Hartman and the fine folks on the ABC television network. Initially, I demanded script approval and my own private Winnebago for the shoot. I was given half a Tootsie Roll and a WCTI-12 button.

When Mr. Gardner called, my weekly column for the Kinston Free Press had recently been bumped up to bi-weekly. I was glad the response from readers was positive enough to warrant another weekly slot, and I assumed this meant I’d be able to avoid the humiliation of becoming a Chippendale dancer for a little while longer.

A voice declaring “Hello Jon, this is Reece Gardner” shot out of the phone receiver as if it were propelled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I’m calling to ask if you’d like to appear on my television show next Tuesday.”

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Mr. Gardner’s voice was as regal as it was precise. His pipes made Walter Cronkite sound like Truman Capote by comparison. If eagles could talk, this is what they’d sound like. 

As is my way, I arrived early for the taping. I sat in the control booth and quickly realized the TACC 9 studio was not some Wayne & Garth garage project. This was a bonafide TV studio. 

The guest before me was a regional political figure. Mr. Gardner was asking insightful questions, and on more than one occasion ever so politely corrected something presented by his guest as fact. This was no fluffy chat show and I had no guarantee of walking out of there with an ounce of credibility.

When it was my turn I sat down and Mr. Gardner instructed me to clip the microphone to my jacket. He asked how I was doing and I told him that looking at the monitor made me realize I had a face for radio.

 
“You and me both young man,” he said.

For the first 30 seconds of the interview, I was as stiff as a board. Eventually, I forgot about the camera and just had a conversation with Mr. Gardner. He assumed I was from out of state, but when he realized I was a Lenoir County native he seemed to warm up a bit. 

“Where do you get your ideas?” he asked. 

“I accidentally drank some out-of-date milk in the fifth grade and have been a little off ever since,” I said.
In response, Mr. Gardner gave a $5 laugh for a $1 joke. He started bringing up other newspaper humorists and very generously compared me to them. Up until that point, I thought my column was a temporary fluke, but his reaction to what I did was a real confidence booster. 

Over the ensuing years, I appeared on The Reece Gardner Hour many times. When it was announced that Larry King was leaving his CNN talk show, I asked Mr. Gardner if I could write a column wherein he would take over the empty CNN slot. He gave me the green light and even left a positive comment about it on the newspaper’s social media site.

On many occasions, Mr. Gardner would chat with me after his show was finished. I confided in him that I was worried about the Free Press being bought and sold so often. I told him that I loved the job so much but from a business standpoint it would be impossible for me to stay. When I told him that he actually teared up a bit and hugged me.

The apex of my encounters with Mr. Gardner was the time he and his sweet wife Emma invited Bryan Hanks, Jennifer Shrader, my wife, and me to their home for dinner. Later on my wife and I had them over for dinner, and I’ll never forget Mrs. Gardner telling our oldest daughter (“So this is Tax Deduction #1!”) her story of being a young girl and keeping a pack of cigarettes in her purse to look cool but never actually smoking them. 

The last time I saw Mr. Gardner outside the confines of his show was when I interviewed him for a podcast at his home. When it came time to take a photo for the episode, I noticed there was a foosball table nearby. 

“Oh my,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll be glad to.”

It’s impossible to encapsulate what Mr. Gardner meant to his community in just a few paragraphs. He was one of the last links to old-school, no-nonsense broadcasting, and anyone who had the opportunity to interact with him – be it on or off the air – knew they were in the presence of someone special. 

If you have a story to tell about Reece Gardner, please float it out to the world. It would be a shame if his body of work were to fade out of our collective memory.

The entire archive of shows can be found at www.BryanHanks.com.

The Bryan Hanks Show airs on 960-AM in Kinston and 960TheBull.com daily at 7 a.m. & 3 p.m. It also airs on the suite of 252ESPN.com stations in New Bern and Greenville (107.5-FM) at 6 p.m.