OLDER THAN DIRT - PART THREE AND MAYBE THE LAST.MAYBE!

The Legend of Lee and King Lionel

Judy and I,uh, I'm Richard, were visiting up at Uncle Ely Doty's a few weeks ago, and we got to joking about being 'older than dirt.' (As a sidelight, after telling the 'older than dirt' joke I had pulled on a brilliant teenager named Arleta Marshall in 1968, I saw Arleta in Harrison! What a joy! She was one of my all-time best students!) I mentioned the TV station WBAP in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1953, and its companion station WBAP-AM radio. I said I had a doozy of a story that started with WBAP radio, and it's so long that I'm still not through telling it!

Mom and I used to listen to a clasical music show on WBAP-AM in 1953 or 1954 hosted by a young booth announcer from Arlington, Texas, named Lee Woodward, who was about 24 at the time. Mom said she thought she knew the young man from his high school days. (I think he was born in 1928; he would have been a freshman and later a sophomore when my Dad was principal at Arlington High School, 1942-44.)

[From on-line genealogy sites, it looks like Lee was born on November 28, 1928, over a few miles west of Arlington in Fort Worth. Lee's dad was Valin Ridge Woodward, who was my family's doctor when they lived in Arlington and his mom was Frances Louise "Fannie" McKinley Woodward. They lived in "Franwood," an elegant Southern L-shaped home now on the list of historical sites, built in 1893 by her father, and named for her.]

Our life in Texas was interrupted when Dad was appointed to serve in the (then) State Department office called the Servicio Cooperativo Internacional de Educación (International Co-operative Education Service) and we left Ft. Worth and lived in Quito, Ecuador, for two years.

When we returned from South America, we moved to Abilene, Texas, and Dad taught at McMurry College (now University.) We turned on our TV and lo and behold! there was Lee Woodward, doing the weather on Abilene TV station KRBC! Mom laughed and said that Lee had folowed us! He vanished quickly, moving off to a better market somewhere, and we stayed in Abilene until 1959.

Mom and Dad had always loved the Ozarks, and had toured here in the 1930's as Baptist revival visiting music minister (Dad) and soloist on violin and director of whatever orchestra the church could raise (Mom.) Mom and Dad also sang duets. In 1959 the family began seeking a job for Dad in the Ozarks. We had bought a piece of land on Sugar Mountain, on Old Highway 71 in the Boston Mountains, near the town of Brentwood, Arkansas, when we were on vacation the year before, and we spent the summer of 1959 there.

Dad accepted a professorship at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, in the foothills of the Ozarks right on the Oklahoma line. We moved there and turned on our TV. We watched KOTV news, out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, then the weather came on and the weatherman was

We howled with delight. "He's still following us!" Mom cheered. (We ignored the fact that he had gotten there first.)

Even better than being a weatherman, Lee also developed a comic puppet character named King Lionel, using a Bill Beard puppet named Charlemagne. Lee, who always did comic voices and things, developed a ventriloquist style where he actually inhaled the words for Lionel. This kept his lips from moving as much and gave Lionel a very spooky animal-growl-sounding voice. Starting sometime around 1959, Lee hosted a show called "King Lionel's Court," that ran 45 minutes in the afternoon, with Three Stooges short films punctuated by funny scenes with Lionel.

I always watched to see what Lionel would say! One day Lee said, "They've built a new airport between Dallas and Fort Worth (Lee's old 'stomping grounds') and they're calling it Dal-Worth." The camera cut to Lionel, and Lionel said, "Could have been worse, they could have called it Worth-las!" Lee laughed so hard I'm absolutely certain that he didn't know Lionel was going to say that! That kind of spontaneity made the show a hit with kids and college-age young adults alike!

King Lionel's Court ran for about five years, and was moved to Saturday morning. Unfortunately, its ratings were poor up against big network cartoon shows, and it soon folded. So many viewers wrote in, wanting Lionel to be revived somehow, that Lionel came back to sit on Lee's lap at the end of the 6:00 o'clock newscast, after the weather and sports. The King would banter back and forth with the newsmen and sports guy, as well as with Lee the weatherman. It was funny every single night! Lionel never failed to make the other newsmen laugh. Lee is a comic genius, or is it Lionel,it's hard to tell!

In addition to all his other talents, Lee had a great singing voice (remember, his brother Morgan planned on a career in grand opera until the war intervened.) Lee and Lionel appeared many times with the Tulsa Symphony, singing every kid-friendly opus like "Peter and the Wolf."

I finished college in 1968 and moved to Harrison, Arkansas, where I taught high school for 25 years, never seeing Lee Woodward on TV again. But my family has known him, or of him, all my life. I’ve got a couple o’ more anecdotes…but I’ll save ‘em for another day!