Harry Aurandt had no recollection of his father, who died before Harry was two. But Harry grew up to lead a fruitful life as a cop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In December of 1921, Harry was driving Ike Wilkinson, Tulsa’s chief-of-detectives. Tulsa was in the midst of a crime wave and cops were told to watch out for anything that looked suspicious.

Harry and Ike spotted a car parked on a country road and they stopped. That’s when the two officers were ambushed by four desperadoes. Harry raised both hands as instructed but the bad guys shot him anyway -- one bullet lodged in his liver and another pierced a lung.

Ike shot back but was hit with a barrage of bullets that didn’t kill him but would cost him the use of both legs. Harry, although critically wounded, managed to drive a few miles to a nearby farmhouse where they got help.

Tulsa police, enraged by the ambush, sent a posse of some 200 cops and volunteers looking for the bandits who were soon arrested and jailed. Ike survived the attack but Harry did not. Harry left a widow and a two-year-old son, Paul, who like his father, would never have the chance to really know his daddy.

In spite of being reared by a single parent, Paul did well at Central High and later at the University of Oklahoma. It was in high school -- in Isabelle Ronan’s English and speech class -- that Paul developed a passion for our language. Paul even got a taste of radio during the early ’30s in one of Miss Ronan’s experimental broadcasting classes.

You’ve probably already guessed who I’m talking about. His name was Paul Aurandt but all these years he’s been using his middle name. So you know him as Paul Harvey, a radio icon at ABC News for nearly 60 years.