Enjoy your retirement, Li’l Tommy!

A few days ago, we found out that Tommy Edwards, the great Chicago DJ whose latest claim to fame was his beloved intro of the Bulls, is retiring.  Mitch Michaels did a blog post about it a few days ago.  He personally knew the guy!  (Mitch has been pretty much everywhere.)

I thought I’d throw my two cents in since I actually, in an incredibly small way, knew him too.  At least enough to know what a really excellent guy he is.

In the Fall of 1980, I was an intern at WLS where Tommy was doing middays.  He came on right after Larry Lujack, so they sat together and did Animal Stories at the end of Larry’s show.  (I actually heard them together again years later on the short-lived but great “Real Oldies 1690”, playing all pre-Beatles hits.)

But here’s the kind of guy Tommy is.  He was the midday guy at the most gigantic top-40 powerhouse there was, and my cohorts and I were unpaid interns, but when we were sitting around the jock lounge doing whatever menial thing we had to do, he never failed to chat with us.  Furthermore, several months after my internship, I was waiting for a bus downtown, and he happened to be walking by, and he stopped to say Hi!  He actually remembered me!  That’s the kind of guy Tommy is.

So many times, tributes to someone like Tommy get said after he’s passed away.  I’m really glad that we didn’t have to wait for his death to talk about what a great person he is.  Enjoy your retirement, Tommy.