Carl Kasell, Longtime Voice of ‘Morning Edition’ on NPR, Dies at 84

Carl Kassell has died after working for more than 30 years on National Public Radio. He was 84.

Kasell passed away on Tuesday, according to the announcement made by NPR. He was suffering from complications with Alzheimer’s disease, and died in Potomac, Maryland.

Kasell read the news on NPR‘s Morning Edition for more than three decades. He made an impression with his distinct, baritone voice and authoritative delivery. However, later in his career, he revealed a sense of levity and humor as well, when he became a judge and official scorekeeper on NPR’s game show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

Kasell grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He reportedly dreamed of being a newscaster his whole life.

“I sometimes would hide behind the radio and pretend I was on the air,” he recalled in 2009.

For practice, he said he used his grandmother’s wind-up Victrola, reciting his own made-up ads between songs.

“I would sit there sometimes and play those records, and I’d put in commercials between them,” he said. “And I would do a newscast just like the guy on the radio did.”

Kasell was only 16 years old when he got his first job on the radio. He began by DJ-ing a late-night music show for a local radio station. When he enrolled at the University of North Carolina, the WUNC radio station was brand new, and he was one of the first students to work there.

After college, Kasell served a stint in the military. When he returend to Goldsboro, he had a job waiting for him at the station he had worked for as a teen. However, he ended up moving to Northern Virginia, where a friend convinced him to work at a brand new station. At the time, Kasell was mostly interested in DJ work.

“I kind of left the records behind,” Kasell said. “It came at a time when so much was happening; we had the Vietnam War, the demonstrations downtown in Washington, the [Martin Luther King] and Bobby Kennedy assassinations. And so it was a great learning period even though [there were] bad times in there.”

NPR first hired Kasell in 1975. He began as a part-time employee, waiting four years to read the news on air. At the time, Morning Edition was a brand new show. Kasell became a staple of the morning commute for innumerable people, and guided America through such stories as the terrorist attack on 9/11, during which he was on the air.

This made it all the more surprising when Kasell revealed his light-hearted side on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! In their memorial for him, NPR noted that Kasell himself was the prize for contestants in the early days of the show. Before there was money in the budget for prizes, the winner got to have Kasell record their outgoing voicemail message.

Kasell retired in 2014.