Roger Awsumb, Twin Cities TV's Casey Jones, 74
peighton
Published Jul 16, 2002
Children of 50 smiled sadly when they heard, and some sang a special
"Happy Birthday" song they remembered from when they and television
were small. They thought about going home for a peanut butter sandwich
and listening for a train whistle, mournful though it would sound.
Casey is gone.
Roger Awsumb, the amiable TV uncle adored by a broad generation of
Minnesota kids as their lunch buddy Casey Jones, died Monday after
suffering a heart attack. He was 74.
"He was Casey until the ambulance took him away this morning," said
Allen Gray, who gave Awsumb a second career at KLKS Radio in Breezy
Point, Minn., where he talked sports, weather and cafe specials and
played easy-listening music for retirees.
"He went from entertaining little kids to entertaining older kids,"
Gray said. "But he never stopped being Casey. He wore his striped
overalls and railway cap at every possible opportunity. He was special
to the kids, and he realized that."
Steve Iverson, 39, was 7 when his mother drove him from Willmar to
Minneapolis to watch "Lunch With Casey" and meet the star.
"It was like going to Disneyland," he said.
The show featured cartoons, animals, special guests and skits with
Lynn Dwyer, who played sidekick Roundhouse Rodney. It ran from 1953
through the '60s on Channel 11, then called WTCN. Dwyer died in 1976.
Iverson, a programmer for Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, has a Web
site dedicated to Awsumb: http://www.lunchwithcasey.com .
'Your old buddy'
Awsumb lived in Merrifield, Minn. He died at St. Joseph's Medical
Center in Brainerd. He had had health problems recently, Gray said,
but he was in the studio last week, recording commercials for sponsors
who insisted on his mashed-potatoes-and-gravy voice.
He was a big man with a friendly, attentive face. On TV, he rode into
children's homes on a cardboard locomotive, waving and shouting, "Hi,
gang, it's your old buddy, Casey Jones!"
And he sang:
"Happy, happy birthday, to every girl and boy,
"Hope this very special day brings you lots of joy.
"Hope the birthday pres ents you get from mom and dad,
"Will make this very special day the best you ever had."
Awsumb grew up in St. Paul. He studied speech and radio at Macalester
College and worked at the campus radio station.
"I wanted to be a radio announcer since I was 10 years old," he said
in a 1993 Star Tribune interview. "I was really a shy kind of guy,
though. I had to overcome that."
After college and two years in the Army, he worked at KDLM in Detroit
Lakes, Minn., then at WCCO in Minneapolis. When Channel 11 went on the
air in 1952, he made the switch to TV -- and pulled on a railroader's
cap and coveralls, taking the name of a legendary engineer celebrated
in a familiar song.
"There had been cowboys on TV, and spacemen," he said. "But not a
railroad engineer. And a train engineer is a hero to kids."
The noon show started in 1953. Later came "Wake Up with Casey and
Roundhouse" and an afternoon show, "Casey and Roundhouse at Grandma
Lumpit's Boardinghouse." They rode cable to communities in five
states.
In more than 8,000 shows, Awsumb calculated, he ate 16,000 peanut
butter sandwiches. "I tried to have what the kids would have," he
said, including milk and an apple. He had dentists on the show to talk
about brushing.
He had a mechanic explain how cars work and a beekeeper to tell about
honey. He read the names of birthday girls and boys on the air until
there were too many; then the names were scrolled.
He claimed to have visited nearly every church and school in Minnesota
to meet his young fans, and he treasured a letter from one 9-year-old
girl who explained why she liked him: "The real reason is because you
are so friendly but not perfect. I don't mean bad, but it's like
you're at home."
His own kids were fans.
"I saw him in a much different light from other kids," son John Awsumb
said for the 1993 story. "They caught him on the tube every day, but
it was outstanding having him as my father. I've always been
enormously proud of him."
Roger Awsumb, who was divorced but said he wouldn't speak the word,
had seven children.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete, but two services are planned, in
Crosslake on Thursday and at Macalester College on Friday.
End of a TV era
In 1960, the TV station tried to drop Casey to make room for a network
show. Children and parents sent in 10,000 letters of protest, and he
was rehired four days later.
But in 1972, with audiences for children's shows declining, Casey was
let go again. On his last day, the Twins' Harmon Killebrew and
Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig stopped to say goodbye.
A boy called and asked to speak to Casey. "If you need a place to
live," he said, "you could come to our house."
After he left TV, Awsumb continued to make personal appearances and
commercials as Casey. He tried running a pizza shop, doing phone sales
and operating a bicycle shop. In 1982 he had a brief revival,
"Breakfast With Casey," on Channel 29.
He suffered a heart attack in 1983, and the next year went to KLKS.
Diane Anderson, a KLKS executive, said people who remembered Awsumb
from TV often came to the station with children or grandchildren.
"He was still so alive," Anderson said. "He loved to be recognized as
Casey. He never got tired of hearing people talk about when they used
to sit with him -- sit in front of their TV sets -- and eat their
peanut butter sandwiches."
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, peighton <peig...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Children of 50 smiled sadly when they heard, and some sang a special
> "Happy Birthday" song they remembered from when they and television
> were small. They thought about going home for a peanut butter
> sandwich and listening for a train whistle, mournful though it would
> sound.
I only dimly remember the birthday song -- I was a little old for this
show when I moved to Minneapolis -- but I do remember Awsumb well. RIP
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
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