The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 152

Vv lil 7i j-'f ifM I ill "Play games with me and I'll just turn my back. I just don't have that much time left. I don't give a damn what the listener thinks of me, personally or professionally. As long as he thinks and listens." east Ohio in 1972 as morning man for WERE (1300-AM). Before the year was out, Dee suffered an apparent heart attack while on the air.

Released from St. Vincent Charity Hospital, Dee soon was back at the microphone, earning high ratings with his bellicose broadcasting. "I came to Cleveland ready to go," he recalled. "And I was great. Those early shows at ERE were magnificent.

That was my high-water mark in Cleveland. Now, I'm back to where I was in '72. Thank God, it's in Washington, where people understand what I'm doing and are enjoying it." un 1974, it was announced that WERE's Gary D. Gilbert would marry WEWS' Liz Richards, host of the popular Morning Exchange. The media marriage, Miss Richards' first and Dee's fourth, turned into a bitter soap opera that was played out before radio listeners and television viewers.

After having been privy to the joys of the couple's courtship, the wedding and Miss Richards' two pregnancies, Clevelanders were hearing both sides of increasingly ugly quarrels. As the marriage started to founder, the news reports became more frequent: July 10, 1976: "Radio personality Gary Dee was arrested by Cleveland police Friday night and charged with disorderly conduct after his wife, TV talk-show personality Liz Richards, accused him of striking her and threatening her with a rifle." July 15, 1976: Liz Richards filed for divorce Wednesday from her husband, Gary Dee." July 28, 1976: "Dee agreed Tuesday to attend a 90-day rehabilitation program that will erase the disorderly-conduct charge against him Dee, who by then had joined WHK, and his wife were reconciled, but the news stories started again in December 1979 when Miss Richards accused him of punching her in the face during a quarrel in their Bra-tenahl home. The disc jockey spent a night in jail, and eventually changed his plea from innocent to no contest, saying his decision was made to spare their two children the pain of a long and bitter trial. In October 1980, the couple was divorced. "I'll say this, I have two darling children," Dee told this writer nearly 3 years later, "and you don't talk bad about your children's moth er.

With Lizzie, bless her heart, we made the mistake of using our private lives as new material. I got caught up in it, and it was awesome. "To pull myself through that a very cruel, inhuman divorce, the way I was treated by the media, from editorials on TV to misquotes in the paper to drunken, thieving attorneys very few men could have come out of that. "I did. It made me 10 times the man I was in Cleveland.

In Cleveland, I was a wimp. I'm a man today. I beat my adversaries. I went to work every day and looked everybody straight in the eye. "God brought me to Washington, D.C.

I'm living proof that honesty, goodness and kindness can get a decent shot at the American dream. I've seen my hell. I'm in heaven today." That's Gary Dee's side. And he says it's not an act. pletely lost it on the air didn't choose my words carefully," Dee admitted.

"I was dead wrong. Professionally, I still don't like Jerry Lewis. But he's no crook, and what he does is wonderful. "It takes a talent to stay in certain parameters. That's what I'm doing in Washington.

There's a defense for everything I've done here. There was no defense for some of the things I did in Cleveland." When Dee left WHK less than a year ago, the station bought ads in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that proclaimed, "Gary Dee is gone for good." So, from the vantage point of Washington, how does Dee feel about Cleveland? "I'm glad I'm not in Cleveland," he said. "I'll leave Cleveland to its own devices. Cleveland just didn't see Gary Dee's talent. You know, God should be the angriest about Cleveland, not Gary Dee.

They destroyed Lake Erie. "I tried to bring out what was wrong. I tried to tell the unions it was over. Cleveland is the end of an era, and it's sad. I tried to tell them that.

Maybe the hatred for Gary Dee was that they knew, deep down in their hearts, that I was right. "Maybe WHK was happy I was gone. WHK wanted me to be funny, just be goofball. I have a message. I'm a teacher.

Only I don't have 35 students, I have a possible 3 million. "It's a shame, because I love Cleveland. Cleveland was very good to me. I proved I could do it in Cleveland under any circumstances. I gained confidence there, but I don't think I really sharpened my talents that much.

I think I've sharpened them more and worked harder in the months I've been here than I did in 11 years in Cleveland." "What I am is alarmingly real on the at. I'm alarmingly honest. Gary David Gilbert was born into a lower-middle-class family in Arkansas. Gary Dee was born about 30 years later in Fresno, Calif. "My folks were good, honest people poor but a lot of pride," Dee said.

"My mother's side of the family was all teachers, and my daddy's side was all farmers. I knew I had talent when I was young, but my parents never encouraged me. Show business wasn't an honest way to make a living." When he was a sophomore in college, his Aunt Camille her told young Gary that he was funny and should be on the radio. "I wanted to be the next Bob Hope or Red Skelton my heroes," he remembered. "I have a very creative mind.

I have the ability to see things just a little differently from a normal person." Dropping out of college, he enrolled at the Don Martin Radio Continued on page 20 is on-the-air antics also caused headlines in area newspapers. He was sued more than once. He resigned from WHK in 1977 (a resignation that wasn't accepted). And he accused Jerry Lewis of pocketing 40 percent of the proceeds from the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon. "That was one of the few times that my eyes rolled back and I com.