It's hard to imagine anyone who did as much for radio -- and did so much with radio--as Norman Corwin. Ask five different radio buffs their favorite Corwin radio play and you might get five different answers. As Clifton Fadiman once remarked, Norman Corwin wrote like several men. There was the the whimsical verse of Corwin's first radio play, "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas." There was the passionate, stirring patriotism of "We Hold These Truths" and the barley concealed outrage of "They Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease." There was the folksy "Between Americans," the poignant boy-and-his-dog drama "The Odyssey of Runyon Jones," the satirical "Descent of the Gods"...and the list could go on for the dozen years or so that Norman Corwin's word was law in radio.

When I made plans to take over as publisher of Nostalgia Digest, Norman came through with a marvelous essay recalling the writing and production of Fourteen August, the V-J Day soliloquy performed on the day of victory by Orson Welles. We sent him several copies of the magazine (which delighted him) and a check for his trouble, which I don't think he ever cashed.

Norman Corwin died on October 18, 2011 at the age of 101. It would be wonderful to think he was still with us physically, but we take comfort in knowing that his work will live on wherever there is a desire for literacy and imagination.

In his memory, we are pleased to present his contribution to the Summer 2005 issue of Nostalgia Digest -- my first issue as publisher and editor. I owe him a lot, but in fairness, anyone who's ever enjoyed an offering from the period known as "The Golden Age of Radio" owes him a lot.

We will always be in his debt. He will always be in our hearts. -- Steve Darnall, publisher, Nostalgia Digest Magazine

RECOLLECTIONS OF FOURTEEN AUGUST

by Norman Corwin

I guess it was only logical for CBS Radio to ask me to write a program commemorating the surrender of Japan, and with it the end of World War II. The main problem -- a huge one -- was that I had only six hours in which to do it, because the surrender came very suddenly, after the dropping of the second atom bomb. The network wanted to salute Victory the very next day.

This extravagantly short notice was in contrast to the several weeks it had taken me to work up an hour-long program in advance of the surrender of Nazi Germany three months earlier. That program, titled On a Note of Triumph, was judged to have done quite well, so it apparently was suggested that I be invited to pitch another inning. That’s where the logic came in.

It wasn’t easy, and to this day, 60 years later, I’m not sure how well I did. All I know for certain is that 1) 1 worked hard all through the night to have a production ready for broadcast in a few hours; 2) that it couldn’t be even faintly journalistic, because that was the job of the news department; and 3) it had to accommodate sound effects and original music.

Who to speak the piece? Was Orson Welles available? Luckily for me he was, and with characteristic courage and generosity he agreed to do it -- script unseen. I then called on Lud Gluskin, who had conducted Bernard Herrmann’s muscular music for On a Note of Triumph, and with the dispatch of a fireman responding to an alarm, Gluskin enlisted Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Lucien Moraweck to compose a background to what turned out to be a 15-minute production.

The program was repeated a few days later when President Harry Truman designated a national day of prayer, and in this version the work bore the title God and Uranium, taken from the line, “God and uranium were on our side.” (I later repented of associating God with a weapon of mass destruction, but this is not the place for confessional remembrance.) And half a century after that broadcast I expanded the script to a half hour for transmission over the network of National Public Radio. This updated edition, using the same elegiac ending but dropping the God and uranium line, was narrated by Charles Kuralt. Titled Fifty Years After 14 August, it won a Dupont Columbia Award. That was nice, but I’d very much rather have Charles Kuralt and Orson Welles back with us.

Those Were the Days will present a four-hour salute to Norman Corwin in January 2012.