Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting
Episode: BW - EP145—001: November 1963 With Jean Shepherd And JFK—I Libertine
Description: Jean Shepherd was born on July 26th, 1921 on the South Side of Chicago to Jean and Anna Shepherd. He grew up in Hammond, Indiana, which according to Shep was a “tough and mean” industrial city.
As an adolescent, Shepherd worked as a mail boy in a steel mill. He began his radio career at the age of sixteen, doing weekly sportscasts for WJOB in Hammond. That job led to juvenile roles on network radio in Chicago, including that of Billy Fairchild in the serial “Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy.”
One of the programs that later came to symbolize Shepherd’s childhoo...