My Best 2006 Audio

As 2006 draws to a close, I look back fondly on the national radio campaign for my 90-percent -true novel, Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel: World War II through the Eyes of a Radio Man, which was co-authored with my late father, Eli Ellison, the guy who lived it. I learned a great deal during 25 broadcast interviews, most of which I enjoyed doing.

An initial nervousness and dry mouth went with the territory, and I always kept a glass of water nearby. The interviewers I truly appreciated were the skilled ones who asked curve ball questions that made me depart from my prepared talking points. They got me to pause, think, and draw on material I would not otherwise have used. The hosts I appreciated least were those who monopolized the conversation, making the program more about them than my work. Fortunately, those people were few.

I quickly discovered that I had to pace myself. When my publicist said that an interview was scheduled for 20 minutes, I had to assume that it was 10. Commercials can cut down broadcast time by up to 50 percent. A couple of times, I was caught flat-footed and didn't have a chance to give ordering information. After these baptisms, I developed greater verbal agility, summarizing and expanding upon material as the situation required.

Although Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel is not a comedy, it has its funny moments, and whenever I was able to make a host laugh, I knew that the interview was going well. Early in the broadcast, I would always say that Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel was 90 percent true--except for the sex scenes, which are absolutely genuine. That really is true, and about half the time, it would break the host up.

Much has been written about the Second World War, perhaps too much. Therefore, it was important for Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel to be unique. Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel is unusual in several respects.

First, it is a combination of actual wartime letters, a love story, and extensive histroical research. I know of no other book on the market that combines these three elements into a seamless whole. A fast read of 315 pages of main text, Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel has over 35 pages and endnotes for those who want to delve more deeply into specific topics.

Secondly, my father was a fighter control soldier, a member of a technical outifit that performed a critical function for the Air Corps that was unknown to the wartime public and remains obscure today. Fighter Control soldiers helped guide pilots to their targets, and, if they were lost or hit, helped bring them back to base. In the two years that my dad was overseas, his outfit, the 327th Fighter Control Squadron, some 300 men-strong, never lost a single pilot. That was one of the great unsung achievements of the top secret system Fighter Control, and the ordinary men who ran it.

Thirdly, unlike the combat soldier, who was usually in the field, Fighter Control technicians lived and worked alongside civilians in urban and semi-urban war zones. So we take you to the bunkhouses and the mess halls, but we also take you to the London tube shelters; the cobblestone streets of Verviers, a small city in eastern Belgium on the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge; and the rolling hills and white farmhouses of Stembert, a pindot town just east of Verviers.

Finally, Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel isn't a book about a John Wayne-type. It's about ordinary Fighter Control technicians who find themselves in extraordinary situations. Amidst boredom and loneliness, they experience fear and the role of fate in life and death. The love and friendship that my father found during World War II was not a result of that conflict but in spite of it.

You can listen to my best six radio broadcasts by clicking here. Please let me know what you think.