You thought your job was tough? How would you like to have your life threatened by a guy who was a convicted murderer, extortionist, and many other heinous crimes under his belt?
Whitey Bulger put out a hit on Boston Herald columnist and current radio news talker Howie Carr. A big critic of the notorious gangster, Carr wrote many articles about Bulger. It appears Bulger took exception.
"Bulger was a serial killer, a coke dealer, a bank robber, and a pedophile," Carr said. So when he learned Bulger wanted him gone, Carr had to improvise. The police used to come by his house in the suburbs early in the morning to run the spotlight across to make sure nobody was around.
"I just started going home a different way every other night," Carr said. "That was more for me. If they want to get to you, they will. I didn't really feel the threat was over until 1995." In fact, Carr said he was glad when Bulger died in 2018.
Carr was born in Portland, Maine, in 1952 and began his career as a reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal before returning to New England in 1979 as assistant city editor for the Boston Herald American (now the Boston Herald.)
Spending a good deal of his life in Boston, I figured Carr would know who in the film world has gotten the accent right.
"It's really a mistake to try to fake a Boston accent," Carr explained. "It's tough. I would say a guy that didn't try but nailed it was Robert Mitchum in The Friends of Eddie Coyle."
On and off for 30 years, Carr has been heard on WRKO AM 680 in Boston.
He's a prolific writer. Carr says when he's writing both fiction and nonfiction, he drops himself in front of a blank screen on his computer. "I make a habit of writing for several hours at a time, not just when the muse strikes. If you wait for that, it's never going to come." He tries to get a thousand words a day, and he leaves them, good or bad. When he revisits them the next day, he can decide what stays or goes.
He's written a fair amount about the Kennedy family. "I spent some of my childhood in Palm Beach," Carr said. "I'd heard a lot of stories about the Kennedy family and even more about JFK. I wrote a lot about the family. The sketchy family history fascinated me. How they got to where they were without really doing something of merit."
It was suggested to Carr he put the stories he wrote about the Kennedy family into a book. "I'm proud of the books,' Carr said.
When did Carr realize he could become a writer? "I was at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts," Carr said. "They told us we had to have some kind of extracurricular activity. I wasn't a good athlete, so I started writing for the Deerfield Scroll. I was pretty good at it. When I went to UNC, I wrote for The Daily Tar Heel."
Radio was also special to the young Carr.
"I spent a lot of time listening to Jerry Williams at WBZ in Boston. Some have called Williams the Dean of Talk Radio."
"I was writing a column for the Boston Herald, covering a lot of political stuff," Carr explained. "I was covering the Democratic convention, and Williams saw one of my columns and apparently liked it. He had me on his radio show, and it was a big hit. I ended up coming back the very next day."
During the next year, Carr was on the show more often. "I became Jerry's fill-in. We were always deluged with calls when I was on, and it became a weekly thing."
Carr started at the Boston Herald as a general assignment reporter. He worked on some stories at Boston City Hall. "I covered the fourth term of mayor Kevin White. His third term was a disaster. He had all these ex-cons working for him."
Never tell what you can show in your books. I've always tried to do that. Transcripts are often a wonderful source. You can demonstrate how incoherent someone is."
Getting up around 6:00 a.m. Carr starts going over news on the internet to use on his show.
"It's easy now,' he said. "In the old days, somebody would call me up and say there is a story at such and such a place. Sometimes they'd fax me a story tip."
Carr agrees that newspapers are dead, and the future of radio is up in the air.
"I use a lot of sound bytes on my show. I do a lot of stuff with Joe Biden every day. I capture his incoherent statements on tape. Just listen to him speak. He forgets people he's with, can't pronounce names, even the easy ones, bread and butter names."
"Radio, in general, isn't in good shape," Carr explained. "Talk will survive. It can be local. Radio is still more immediate than a podcast. I think the future of music on the radio is in jeopardy. Sports isn't what it used to be."
He's admittedly not a big sports fan. Even with his Boston Celtics in the NBA finals, that doesn't move the emotional needle with Carr.
"I root for whoever is playing the Red Sox and Patriots," Carr said. Perhaps this comes from when he was forced to work at a station due to a no-compete contract. "It was the worst radio company, and I was an indentured servant for seven years. They had a sports station, and whenever a sports team was doing well, we'd have to provide more coverage."
The station also wanted Carr to remain on the AM side of the station. "They said they were offering me the same as FM money, but it's not the same. You can't compare AM to FM."
What's on his nightstand? I read a lot of different mystery books," Carr said. "Chewing gum for the eyes. I love the Perry Mason books. Nero Wolfe. Right now, I'm reading William Fuller."
Carr spends time in Palm Beach when he can and doesn't do a whole lot other than relax.
"We've got a big pool on the Intracoastal waterway. "I read, turn my chair toward the water, and watch all the big boats go by."
That's the way to go, Howie. Just take it easy.
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