A lot of keyboards are busy today either celebrating the life and career of the estimable Rush Limbaugh or are celebrating his death. You know, the usual blue-checkmark accounts on Twitter engaging in the exercise. I will spend little time on the latter. I do not wish to show any respect to the secular cretins among us who celebrate anyone’s death.

We all remember “firsts” in our lives. Certain political memories, among others (this is a family blog) stick with us forever, such as the JFK assassination. The days that Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan were shot. And for those living in Washington, DC back in 1982, the Air Florida Flight 90 crash on the 14th Street Bridge. Hours later, on the same day, DC’s once-vaunted Metro system experienced their first-even subway crash at the beginning of the afternoon rush hour. Lenny Skutnick’s life-saving heroics in the Potomac River that cold winter morning still lives on in my memory. Trump’s surprise election night victory four years ago is clearly another.

I also remember the first time I tuned into Rush Limbaugh on the radio. It was in late April 1989, and I’d just started a new job. I had long been fascinated with news/talk radio, which had no personalities in those days. Just lots of open line time for average folks to opine on certain issues. I would listen for hours to WRC AM980 radio in DC during the early ’80s.