Obituary: Larry King

 Larry King, famous for  being one of the leading talk show hosts in the country first on radio and then on television, has died at the age of 87. King, known for his informal appearance and suspenders rather than wearing stuffy blue suits, had been in poor health in recent years.  In addition, he suffered great tragedy when he lost two of his children over a period of a few weeks last year.

Most notably, he hosted Larry King Live on CNN for 25 years, interviewing some of the most famous people in the world.  He knew how to make guests feel at ease, sometimes garnering criticism for being too "'soft."  I watched the show off and on for many years.

His son, Chance, announced his father's death today.

It appears King suffered from COVID-19 as well as his numerous other health problems.  He was diagnosed with it in December.

Snip:

Born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, King was raised by two Jewish immigrants. His mother, Jennie (Gitlitz) Zeiger, was from Lithuania, while his father, Edward Zeiger, hailed from Ukraine. Edward died of a heart attack when King was 10, a memory King said he mostly "blocked out."

Left to raise King and his younger brother Marty alone, Jennie Zeiger was forced to go on welfare to support her children. The death had a profound effect on King, and his mother. ... 

King's career in media began in earnest in 1957, when he took a job as a disc jockey at WAHR-AM in Miami. It was then when he made the decision to drop his surname.

"You can't use Larry Zeiger," he recalled his boss at the station saying. "It's too ethnic. People won't be able to spell it or remember it. You need a better name." 

"There was no time to think about whether this was good or bad or what my mother would say. I was going on the air in five minutes," King wrote in his 2009 autobiography.

"The Miami Herald was spread out on his desk. Face-up was a full-page ad for King's Wholesale Liquors. The general manager looked down and said, 'King! How about Larry King?'"

As Lawrence Zeiger, you can find his high school senior picture in the Lafayette High School, Brooklyn, NY (PS 400),  yearbook in the 1951 volume at Classmates.com.  He was manager of the basketball team, and a prefect of the cafeteria and locker squads.  His dream, which came true way beyond what he ever imagined, was being a radio announcer, with plans to attend the University of Connecticut.  His first ex-wife also attended the same high school.  They did what a lot of stupid people did in those days, and that is marry right out of high school.  The marriage was annulled.  King married seven more times to six different women.