When I was a kid, Detroit's WJR, "The Great Voice of the Great Lakes,"
was one of the great AM radio stations, and Karl Haas was one of its most
distinctive local personalities and voices, along with "Bud" Guest, whose
"Sunny Side of the Street" morning program was the kind of old-time radio
show Garrison Keillor loves to parody, and the legendary Tigers baseball
announcer Ernie Harwell.  I remember Haas's broadcasts very fondly (and
still occasionally hear bits of them on WNIB here in northern Illinois).
I am convinced that they were as important a part of my early musical
education as my piano lessons or Leonard Bernstein's "Young People's
Concerts." I'm sure that I know a great deal of repertoire and an even
greater amount of music trivia because I heard it first on his program.
One could easily go elsewhere to hear better renditions of Beethoven's Op.
13, and Haas's tenure as an arts administrator, succeeding Joseph Maddy as
head of the National Music Camp and the Interlochen Arts Academy, was not
a stellar success, but I think his influence on the music world has been
on the whole an overwhelmingly positive one.

DPHorn, who got his musical education wherever he could get it.