My Phil Donahue/Graduation Story

Television talk show legend Phil Donahue passed yesterday at 88. 

Every single person doing a daytime show, or moderating a cable panel show, stands on the shoulders of this man’s work, as has been aptly noted today.

I never met him, but I do have a Phil story, sort of.

It’s May 1987, and I’m at the graduation for my college (“College of Communication”) at Boston University. They way they did it, at least back then, is you attended a ceremony just for the graduates of your college, numbering a few hundred, and then there was the massive, university-wide “commencement”.

My parents came “into town” for the big event, notable since my dad was not a man for large crowds or longwinded affairs. I am his son for sure.

Sure, I was the first in my family to graduate college. That was a big deal. Was.

Until…my parents spotted Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas on the lawn outside the school. Seems his daughter was a classmate (I couldn’t tell you to this day if I had ever known that, or ever met her, and I was no slouch at meeting girls back then).

Once Phil and Marlo were spotted, that became the lede. Which I was, and am, fine with. I’m just lucky Jack Lord wasn’t there, too, or they might have forgotten to give me a lift home.

Donahue even had his jacket over his shoulder, like on the show. And she was “That Girl”, for cryin’ out loud, radiantly adorable. It being Boston, naturally, everyone pretended they were nobody.

Still, it was a big day,