Kal Rudman, music maven, philanthropist (and legend)
Kal Rudman, the music maven and Philadelphia philanthropist, offers me a piece of paper and a bit of advice. "You should open your column," he says, "with this."
Kal Rudman, the music maven and Philadelphia philanthropist, offers me a piece of paper and a bit of advice.
"You should open your column," he says, "with this."
The email that's already been printed out for me is from a grateful Philly high school student, and is noteworthy indeed.
But first, I have a few questions for Rudman, who turns 86 on Sunday - and whose philanthropic mission is, like his taste in pop music, catholic.
Despite his having been "born Jewish, but only on my mother's . . . and father's side," he says, savoring the punch line.
"Too many people are called legends," adds the founder of the Friday Morning Quarterback (fmqb.com), the legendary radio-industry tip sheet where he continues as publisher.
"I'm a total mystery," Rudman says, adding, "I speak in metaphors" and then, "I speak Yiddish fluently . . . which opens, obviously, many doors."
Declarations, observations, and locutions such as these punctuate our convivial hours of conversation.
Dressed in black (the same color as his hair) and with a cane he prefers not to use by his side, Rudman is erudite and earthy, charming and commanding, self-deprecating yet prone to, as he wryly puts it, "breaking my arm patting myself on the back."
He deploys big words, drops big names, and dishes a few (off the record, alas) while seasoning his philosophical, cultural, and scientific patter with witty bits of shtick.
"Whatever I put my hand to turns to gold," says Rudman, who became familiar to national audiences as a frequent guest on Today, Merv Griffin, and other TV programs in the 1980s.
During that decade his "Killer Kal" interviews with professional wrestlers also made him a Philly-area cable-TV fixture.
"It's not luck," Rudman insists. "It's the right place, the right time, deductive reasoning, and analysis . . . especially when I'm in the bathroom. I wonder if that worked for Einstein?"
He and I are chatting in the gracious Cherry Hill home he shares with Lucille, his wife of 58 years.
"Kal is the proverbial 'force of nature,' " she tells me. "He has a knack for energizing those around him to join in projects that make a positive impact on the community."
Lucille, 86, is her husband's partner in the Kal and Lucille Rudman Foundation.
Established more than 20 years ago, their charity supports public safety and children's programs, and assists religious institutions of many denominations, such as the recently vandalized St. Lawrence Church in Lindenwold.
Two of the couple's other major philanthropic endeavors - the Rudman Institute at Drexel University and the Kal & Lucille Rudman Media Center at Temple University - focus on education.
Of which Kal Rudman, who grew up a grocer's son at Seventh and Berks in North Philly, has plenty: a diploma from Central High (he graduated with the 188th class, in 1947) as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees from Penn and Temple, respectively.
But let me let him tell you.
"My education is so comprehensive," says Rudman, who spent time in medical school but didn't finish a degree. "I have four honorary doctorates. And I have a Ph.D. in street [smarts]. Everything but the thesis."
After a brief turn as an Audubon High School teacher, Rudman began his professional broadcasting career in 1959, spinning records on the midnight shift at what was then Camden's municipal station, WCAM-AM.
"You were in the business of cash flow and bottom line, and you'd better know why you were there," he recalls.
In 1968, Rudman founded the Friday Morning Quarterback at his home in Northeast Philadelphia, typing and stapling the issues himself.
He capitalized on his grasp of the radio business and his "golden ear" for the music other people wanted to hear - before they heard it.
Friday Morning Quarterback became one of American radio's top tip sheets, earning revenue from subscriptions and ad sales. "And when I finally made enough money," Rudman says, "we started the foundation."
"I always admired Kal's perspicacity, his ability to sense what was going to happen," says pioneering Philadelphia FM disc jockey Michael Tearson.
"He could sense a star in the making. He could sense a hit."
Which Rudman wants this column to be. So he brings up the email again.
"You got a better one?" he asks me, smiling. "If you don't lead with it, how about the closing?"
Turns out the email is from a young man named Sokunvichet Long, who wrote it last April while a senior at Philadelphia's Masterman High School.
Rudman paid for Long (and others) to attend a weekend program to familiarize students with careers in medicine. And the Masterman grad is now a freshman in an eight-year medical-education program at Brown University ("that's Ivy League," Rudman notes).
"As a kid who has been living in the Olney neighborhood all his life, I could not [imagine] that such a dream . . . could come true," Long wrote.
"From the bottom of my heart, Mr. Rudman," he continued, "there are not enough words to describe how grateful I am."
To which I would add just three words:
Happy Birthday, Kal.
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