People Talk / A conversation with Stratton Rawson
His signature is his voice
There’s no mistaking Stratton Rawson, senior producer at 94.5 WNEDFM. Whether walking his dog Cocoa Puff, eating lunch daily at his favored Cafe 59 or setting up for a game of badminton, Rawson’s signature is his voice. And after years on local airwaves, there’s one topic of conversation Rawson routinely avoids.
People Talk: Your gift for talking is celebrated. Is there a subject you stay away from?
Stratton Rawson: This is a trying question for me. I know one I don’t like: medical problems. I hate to hear other people talk about their medical problems, and I hate to talk about them because I believe there is such a thing as the power of suggestion. You will walk away, but those symptoms will stay with you for a while.
PT: Describe your voice.
SR: My voice is a peculiar entity because unlike most people and broadcasters who train their voice to be within a certain limit, my voice tends to hit many many different stops. It’s high, it’s low, it’s in between. The best compliment I used to get was it’s soporific: “You put me to sleep.”
PT: Imagine for a moment you are 12 and it’s summer. What do you do?
SR: I had four brothers and we were required to do household tasks in the morning—weed the garden, mow the lawn. We complained about the slave labor, but it really only took about two hours and then we could play. We rode our bicycles all over the place. And then my mother, who grew up in the South on the Beaufort River, she had to swim. So sometime around 3 o’clock, we’d have to swim.
PT: Who is your best friend?
SR: This is a problem. My best friend is a dog by the name of Cocoa Puff. She allows me to read to her by the hour. No one else can stand my habit of reading out loud. She will curl up next to me and fall asleep. I can read anything. She doesn’t care whether it’s a book of history, a book of poems. When I was a kid, I had a slight problem with dyslexia, so that reading out loud is actually how I best read. I hear the words better than I see them.
PT: Do you keep a journal? SR:No, I write poems, mostly occasional poems: when somebody gets married, and has a child. There are journals I carry with me, because everyone should have a secret vocation.
PT: If you could have any wish… SR:It would be that once my ashes are spread wherever they are to be spread someone finds the poems I’ve written, as they did with Emily Dickinson, and the influence of the poems continues. That’s the life beyond my life that I would like to have happen.
PT: You marked a 60th birthday recently. Was it a big celebration?
SR: Two years ago, and no. The 50th was a big celebration. The 60th went by without comment, and I don’t quite know why. I think my mother, as she gets older, is less prone to notice birthdays because it reminds her that she’s moving along.
PT: So what’s in your next decade?
SR: This has been one of the besetting sins of my life. I don’t plan. I grab the opportunity, the adventure. When I was in junior high, they would give the Cooter preference test, and it was to determine what your vocation would be. I failed every time I took it.
PT: What’s your most recent grab?
SR: I don’t even know. The doctor suggested after last year’s physical that I walk, so I’m busy walking. It has done two things: It reminds me that I live in a beautiful city, and that I am lucky to live here.
PT: What do you do for fun?
SR: Lots of things. I bird. I go out and watch birds. I don’t have a life list. I go out and see old friends. I make sure the hawks are nesting again, the red-tails are back where they’re supposed to be. My favorite spot is the Alabama Swamps. That, and I play badminton like a maniac, backyard badminton. I steal backyards in order to put my badminton net up.
PT:Do you have a cell phone?
SR: No, we have a rotary phone. I see the glossy ads. They come to me— for the iPhone, the Blackberry, and there is this slight yearning. I am known where I work as the person you can’t get ahold of by e-mail or by phone. If you want to talk to me, you must come find me.
PT: You must be good around the campfire.
SR: Yes, and I’m good at making campfires, etc. There’s a whole history of campfires in my life. A campfire is for singing, story-telling. It is not for making sticky, gooey messes.
PT: What’s your favorite word?
SR: Off the top of my head? I’m at a loss. Love.
PT: What's your favorite patriotic song?
SR:
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