Roger Awsumb, TV's Casey Jones, dead at 74

Children of 50 smiled sadly when they heard, and some sang a special "Happy Birthday" song they remembered from when they and television were small. They thought about going home for a peanut butter sandwich and listening for a train whistle, mournful though it would sound.

Casey is gone.

Roger Awsumb, the amiable TV uncle adored by a broad generation of Minnesota kids as their lunch buddy Casey Jones, died Monday after suffering a heart attack. He was 74.

"He was Casey until the ambulance took him away this morning," said Allen Gray, who gave Awsumb a second career at KLKS Radio in Breezy Point, Minn., where he talked sports, weather and cafe specials and played easy-listening music for retirees.

"He went from entertaining little kids to entertaining older kids," Gray said. "But he never stopped being Casey. He wore his striped overalls and railway cap at every possible opportunity. He was special to the kids, and he realized that."

Steve Iverson, 39, was 7 when his mother drove him from Willmar to Minneapolis to watch "Lunch With Casey" and meet the star.

"It was like going to Disneyland," he said.

The show featured cartoons, animals, special guests and skits with Lynn Dwyer, who played sidekick Roundhouse Rodney. It ran from 1953 through the '60s on Channel 11, then called WTCN. Dwyer died in 1976.

Iverson, a programmer for Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, has a Web site dedicated to Awsumb: http://www.lunchwithcasey.com .

'Your old buddy'

Awsumb lived in Merrifield, Minn. He died at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Brainerd. He had had health problems recently, Gray said, but he was in the studio last week, recording commercials for sponsors who insisted on his mashed-potatoes-and-gravy voice.

He was a big man with a friendly, attentive face. On TV, he rode into children's homes on a cardboard locomotive, waving and shouting, "Hi, gang, it's your old buddy, Casey Jones!"

And he sang:

"Happy, happy birthday, to every girl and boy,

"Hope this very special day brings you lots of joy.

"Hope the birthday pres ents you get from mom and dad,

"Will make this very special day the best you ever had."

Awsumb grew up in St. Paul. He studied speech and radio at Macalester College and worked at the campus radio station.

"I wanted to be a radio announcer since I was 10 years old," he said in a 1993 Star Tribune interview. "I was really a shy kind of guy, though. I had to overcome that."

After college and two years in the Army, he worked at KDLM in Detroit Lakes, Minn., then at WCCO in Minneapolis. When Channel 11 went on the air in 1952, he made the switch to TV -- and pulled on a railroader's cap and coveralls, taking the name of a legendary engineer celebrated in a familiar song.

"There had been cowboys on TV, and spacemen," he said. "But not a railroad engineer. And a train engineer is a hero to kids."

The noon show started in 1953. Later came "Wake Up with Casey and Roundhouse" and an afternoon show, "Casey and Roundhouse at Grandma Lumpit's Boardinghouse." They rode cable to communities in five states.

In more than 8,000 shows, Awsumb calculated, he ate 16,000 peanut butter sandwiches. "I tried to have what the kids would have," he said, including milk and an apple. He had dentists on the show to talk about brushing.

He had a mechanic explain how cars work and a beekeeper to tell about honey. He read the names of birthday girls and boys on the air until there were too many; then the names were scrolled.

He claimed to have visited nearly every church and school in Minnesota to meet his young fans, and he treasured a letter from one 9-year-old girl who explained why she liked him: "The real reason is because you are so friendly but not perfect. I don't mean bad, but it's like you're at home."

His own kids were fans.

"I saw him in a much different light from other kids," son John Awsumb said for the 1993 story. "They caught him on the tube every day, but it was outstanding having him as my father. I've always been enormously proud of him."

Roger Awsumb, who was divorced but said he wouldn't speak the word, had seven children.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete, but two services are planned, in Crosslake on Thursday and at Macalester College on Friday.

End of a TV era

In 1960, the TV station tried to drop Casey to make room for a network show. Children and parents sent in 10,000 letters of protest, and he was rehired four days later.

But in 1972, with audiences for children's shows declining, Casey was let go again. On his last day, the Twins' Harmon Killebrew and Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig stopped to say goodbye.

A boy called and asked to speak to Casey. "If you need a place to live," he said, "you could come to our house."

After he left TV, Awsumb continued to make personal appearances and commercials as Casey. He tried running a pizza shop, doing phone sales and operating a bicycle shop. In 1982 he had a brief revival, "Breakfast With Casey," on Channel 29.

He suffered a heart attack in 1983, and the next year went to KLKS.

Diane Anderson, a KLKS executive, said people who remembered Awsumb from TV often came to the station with children or grandchildren.

"He was still so alive," Anderson said. "He loved to be recognized as Casey. He never got tired of hearing people talk about when they used to sit with him -- sit in front of their TV sets -- and eat their peanut butter sandwiches."

-- Chuck Haga is at crhaga@startribune.com .