By Rob Sanchez
07/25/2010
There will be a tribute show for Terry Sunday July 25th in the evening on KRLA and it will be available by online streaming. For more information click here.
Legendary radio talk show host Terry Anderson died July 7th. He was a victim of pancreatic cancer.
Terry Anderson hosted his show on Sunday evenings for over a decade and had pride that he never missed a show. In late June Terry missed his first show but he came back a week later and gave a brief explanation that he was having trouble with blood clots in his legs. He never mentioned the seriousness of his condition.
I’m sure a lot of people will write Terry Anderson stories, and I hope they do because we all should know more about his brave patriotism. So allow me to tell one.
I met Terry for the first time years ago during an immigration conference in Washington DC. He gave a speech that deeply impressed me because he had the entire crowd was laughing so hard our sides hurt, and yet the things he talked about were more sad, scary, and tragic than funny. Terry could mesmerize a crowd better than anybody I have ever seen.
Terry Anderson was an iconoclastic personality who had one topic to talk about on his radio show: illegal immigration. He was far from one dimensional however — he even did movie reviews. I have been on his show several times to talk about H-1B and I was always impressed by his in-depth knowledge of the issue. He was one of the only people who understood how the H-1B program was being used to destroy the hopes and aspirations of black Americans who wanted to move up the ladder by getting educations that would enable them to get high-tech jobs.
Terry didn’t beat around the bush about his race. Most of the time he referred to himself as an American who happened to be black. He didn’t approve of people calling themselves "African American" because American came second. His nationalism and tough-on-illegal-immigration views often ran him afoul of black leaders. Terry was deeply disturbed by the rift between him and the clueless black leaders that thumbed their nose at their own people who were suffering as a result of the immigration invasion.
I hate to be so blunt because it pains me to say so, but there will be very few tears shed for Terry Anderson in the black community. Most of his fans were white and it was not unusual for black leaders to accuse Terry of being some kind of Uncle Tom. Perhaps the biggest tragedy is that Terry didn’t live long enough to see blacks wise up about immigration and join with all Americans to do something to solve the problem.
I didn’t listen to every one of Terry’s shows but it was rare for me to miss one because I could listen to the podcast the day after the show. My favorite part was the "Most Horriblest Clown of the Week". His nominee always deserved to be skewered and Terry never hesitated to explain why. Like many of his fans I never tired of hearing his opening line: "Stupid people of America! If You Ain’t Mad, You Ain’t Payin' Attention"!
It may be hard to believe but when Terry was away from the microphone he was quiet, modest, and unassuming almost to the point of being introverted. Last year I was at an immigration convention where he was due to speak and I glanced back just in time to see him arrive. He sat in the last row by himself. When I got the chance I moved over and sat next to him. He was very friendly and never gave me the impression he preferred to be alone (although it’s possible he did!). We had some lively conversations during the breaks between the speeches.
Later in the day he asked me if I would like to attend his radio show broadcast because it was Sunday and he would have to do it from Washington DC. The way Terry asked me it seemed like he was wary of imposing on me. Needless to say I was very excited and thought it as a privilege.
I often visited Los Angeles and when I did I made a point of dropping in on Terry’s show at KRLA on Sunday night. He always welcomed me and gave me the VIP treatment by letting me sit inside the booth with him. It felt surreal to be alone with him in the enclosed glass window studio because it’s so isolated and quiet, and yet we were talking to thousands of people across the globe (I rarely talked but Terry often announced I was visiting).
Terry was very professional in his approach to the show. It wasn’t as improvised as it sounds because before he even got to the radio station he made a scribble sheet of what he was going to talk about. His producer arrived early and usually Terry would arrive way before show time. Once the time approached he put on his game face and that was the cue that he was not to be disturbed. He did thorough sound checks and tested the equipment so that everything was ready to go. Minutes before show time he read over his scribble sheet and practiced in his head some of the things he was going to say. The print was so small on his scribble sheet I wondered how he was able to read it. Terry must have had excellent eyesight.
Terry never got a college degree and earned his living by hard blue collar work, and maybe that’s why his style was so rough and tumble. Having said that, Terry was one of the smartest people I have ever met. He had complete command of all aspects of the immigration issue and seemed to know the most arcane of issues that people called about — even from states far removed from California. Sometimes I thought he must have a photographic memory to know so much trivia about local politics. He never faked knowing things by searching on a computer for answers — he just knew what he was talking about — and he was quick on his feet with replies.
After Terry’s show ended he always spent some time to walk around the radio station to thank all of those who worked behind the scenes. He didn’t let the fact that KRLA had often treated his show with disdain get in the way of being friends with everyone at the station.
KRLA is in a corporate office park in the heart of Los Angeles. It’s relatively safe there but arriving to the show after sunset is strange because there is all sorts of grunge going on in the streets. It’s becoming very third world. The KRLA office is like an island in the middle of despair.
Early last year after one of the shows I attended I found myself in the underground parking lot at KRLA with Terry and his producer Mel. We talked for a long time and didn’t notice when midnight passed. One thing I couldn’t help notice is that small cars, usually Hondas, would come into the parking lot and speed between lanes while squeeling their wheels before exiting. The cars were usually 4-door sedans with four people. They didn’t seem threatening but their noise was annoying. Sometimes I got a glance at them and noticed that they looked somewhat Arabic. I asked Terry and Mel what was going on.
Mel explained that they were Armenian gangs that were probably in a turf war. This was their way of being roosters who beat their chests to show how tough they were. About the same time Mel was talking one of the cars seemed to be heading our direction with me standing between their approaching car and Terry. Call me naive but at that point I didn’t sense danger although I did observe that unlike the other times they were approaching us slow and methodically. Before I knew it Terry reached into his trademark overalls and pulled out a huge 45 caliber hand gun. The scene looked like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie because Terry’s gun was large even compared to his large frame. My first surprise was that he could hide that big of a weapon in his overalls!
Terry cocked the gun with both hands, and held it pointing to the ceiling. There was no question in my mind that this was "condition red". Something cued Terry that this one was not a rooster run. My heart was racing and the adrenaline was surging!
He told me to duck and hide under a car if he started to aim at them because if he does he intends to blow them away before they do it to us. Fortunately that didn’t happen because as soon as they saw Terry they quickly veered away from us, and the parking lot was once again silent. It stayed quiet which proves they all had cell phones. I never felt my life was in danger because if a gunfight would have broken out I would have given the odds to Terry even if the four punks had AK-47s!
I’m not making this up folks — it really happened!
I told Terry that I had no idea he packed heat under his overalls. He explained that in South Central LA the ones who survive are the ones who know the rules of the street, not the rule of law. He told me that he constantly had to look out for himself and his family because of the the death threats that he and his family routinely receive and because most of his neighborhood was overrun by criminal illegal aliens. He also told me about his extensive activism on the behalf of gun rights.
I asked Terry why he didn’t talk more about gun rights on his show. He explained to me that if he had three hours he would talk about all sorts of issues. Since he just had one hour he had to be focused and on target.
Terry remained focused and on target until the day he died.
There will be a tribute show for Terry Sunday July 25th in the evening on KRLA and it will be available by online streaming. For more information click here.
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