Happy Birthday, Peg Lynch

A train compartment out east, many years ago. Two Minnesotans sitting across from each other, one behind a newspaper. She thinks: is it him?

It's possible he'd caught a glimpse of her and wondered: is that her? After all, she'd been in the papers. She had a sitcom on TV for three years.

"I thought, well, that's him," she said, recounting the meeting last year. "That's Lindbergh. So when I got up to go I just had to say something, you know, and he looked at me and smiled, and I said, 'How was your flight?'"

She rolls her eyes and laughs, but it's just the thing one of her characters would have said - flustered, a bit forward, then knocking herself afterwards for such an obvious remark.

You know Lindbergh. The woman? Well, let's back up a bit.

Her radio career started in Albert Lea, writing ads. She started to frame the pitches as a conversation between a husband and wife. Ordinary folk, chatting like a million other couples who knew each other inside and out. If the voice on the air sounded like someone you knew, that was her gift as an actress; if the copy made you want to buy something, that was her skill as a writer. Somewhere along the line, between doing ads in Albert Lea and writing comedy for radio, she invented the sitcom.

It's time we give a hand to Peg Lynch, a pioneer of the airwaves who deserves to be considered as one of the most marvelous talents who got her start in this state.

I'm not saying that still rankles, but when you introduce yourself as a Minnesotan and she brings up 'CCO's decision 56 years after the fact, you suspect it rankled. As it should have.

When I first discovered her work last year I did something you can't do with most of the giants of old radio: I called her up. I expected a frail voice - she was 97, after all - but I got a robust Hello? I apologized for the intrusion.

"Oh, I'm just watching that movie where Olivia DeHavilland goes crazy," she said. "How can I help you?"

If I wasn't the first fan who'd called her out of the blue, I felt like it. I got the Full Peg, a flood of anecdotes and recollections. At the end of the conversation she invited me to come out to the Berkshires and stay a while. ("Bring your family!" she said. "We have a whole upstairs. We never use it, we're old.") Come the summer I flew out, rented a car, and drove the narrow roads into the woods, and sat down for a few interviews, some of which can be found in the video above.

It hasn't been Peg's best year; she landed in the hospital for a spell, and lost her husband of many decades, a former Norwegian WW2 commando later named one of New York City's most handsome businessmen. But her tireless daughter, Astrid, has not only put up a website celebrating her mother's work (peglynch.com, of course) she struck a deal with a distributor of old radio shows, and Peg's brilliant comedy serial has appeared SiriusXM radio. She's on the air again.

"I made it!" he said.

And so did Peg.