(courtesy of the The Joy Boys)

(courtesy of the The Joy Boys)

Just hours after his voice hit the airwaves for the last time, area radio legend Ed Walker passed away early this morning.

The 83-year-old has hosted The Big Broadcast since 1990; he recorded his final show from his hospital bed last week.

He didn’t want to do it—wasn’t feeling up to it after a week of being hospitalized. But Walker reconsidered, The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi reported.

Just once more, pleaded Lettie Holman, Walker’s boss. For the audience, she said. For posterity. His daughter, Susan Walker Scola, agreed, urging her father on.

Walker reconsidered. Okay, he said. One more.

So they assembled last week to record one more, the last of the untold thousands of radio programs Walker has done since he broke into radio as a college student 65 years ago, when Harry Truman was president…

The setting was Room 623 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. Walker, 83 and battling cancer, had been there a week. He did the show in a hospital gown, connected to a bank of hospital monitors. He insisted on getting out of bed to sit upright. An old pro knows you sound better that way.

“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another edition of ‘The Big Broadcast,’ ” he began one last time. “My name is Ed Walker.”

The program aired last night. “Goodbyes are very hard to do, especially when this has been a labor of love. More than anything else, my thanks go out to all the people at WAMU who’ve helped me over the years,” Walker said on the show.

Within a few hours, Walker passed away at a retirement community in Rockville. Heartfelt tributes from multiple generations followed soon thereafter.

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