How an aspiring broadcaster from New York ended up in eastern Idaho for a 30-year radio career
June 5, 2023
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23:01Now PlayingHow an aspiring broadcaster from New York ended up in eastern Idaho for a 30-year radio career
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IDAHO FALLS — Bob Ziel stepped into an elevator at 20 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan when a man wearing a fedora above his eyes and a coat with the collar pulled up put his hand in front of the door and asked if Ziel would hold it open for him.
It was October 1963 and the now retired eastern Idaho broadcaster was working as a delivery boy in New York at the time. It was Friday afternoon around 5:00, and as the man stepped into the elevator, Ziel was shocked to see who it was.
“Mr. Nixon, is that you sir?” Ziel asked.
“Yes,” the man replied.
The Nixon he’s referring to is Richard Nixon, who later became the 37th president of the United States. Nixon had served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president two years prior and was unsuccessful in his bid for California governor the year before.
“They didn’t have secret service protection for former vice presidents back in the early ’60s,” Ziel says in reference to Nixon walking the streets of New York alone and his efforts to use his clothes to conceal his face.
Ziel was a senior in high school at the time, and his parents — who had immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the late 1920s — voted for Nixon when he ran against JFK in 1960.
Though many people at the time believed Nixon’s political career was over, Ziel asked Nixon if he planned to run for president again. In response, Ziel recalls Nixon saying that he wanted to return home and practice law. The elevator they were in happened to be inside the law firm of Nixon, Budge, Rose, Guthrie & Todd. Five years later, Nixon went on to beat Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election.
It was an auspicious moment for the aspiring radio announcer, and it would be another 12 years before a trip through eastern Idaho would land him his first radio gig.
WATCH OUR INTERVIEW WITH ZIEL IN THE VIDEO ABOVE.
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