I can’t remember many moments in my life quite as shocking as the moment yesterday afternoon when WGTD news director Dave McGrath called me with the news that Dennis Getto, restaurant critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, had died. . . at the age of 57.  Dennis has been a regular visitor to my morning show for a decade- with a pre- recorded restaurant review every Friday and a live visit to the program once every two or three months. . .  so this was like losing a member of the family.

Some of you have heard Dennis on the program- but for those of you who haven’t, he was an incredibly vibrant personality – I’m not sure anyone has ever had the same capacity to make you feel like he’s sitting right across from you at the kitchen table,  speaking right to you one-on-one. I thought that the first time I heard him on Jean Ferraca’s program on Wisconsin Public Radio – and felt it from his first visit to the Morning Show, which was back when Bill Guy was still around.  Back then, my job was just to answer the phone in the other room and alert Bill and Dennis that there was another caller waiting to go on the air.  (That was back in the old studios;  now I put phone calls directly on the air myself.)   So back then,  I was much more of a listener- and I found myself completely enraptured by this brilliant and affable guy.  Gradually, Bill and I began to split hosting duties-  and of course after Bill’s death, it became entirely my responsibility to host these fun, free-wheeling hours with Dennis.

Dennis was amazing in many ways-  but one of the most basic and important facets of his great work was that he was able to answer listener questions without a single word of notes in front of him.  That’s in stark contrast to shows like Car Talk or Zorba Pasteur On Your Health or Calling All Pets, where callers phone in their questions to an answering machine, and the host has all kinds of time to properly prepare an answer before the callback occurs (days or even weeks later). . .   The Morning Show visits of Dennis Getto were entirely live affairs, and the information Dennis offered came right from that incredible memory of his.

Dennis also had this lovely sincere quality to his work.  He seemed to truly and sincerely care about the each caller and whatever question they happened to pose – and that’s the kind of thing that really can’t be faked.  (Hardly anyone is that good an actor.)   He also had a tremendous sense of humor – oodles of personality – and a knowledge of food and food preparation that was positively encylopedic!

I am so sorry he has died so suddenly- and also sorry that he didn’t choose to share his health problems with Dave and me.  That was his choice, of course, but if we had known that he was fighting this serious disease-  pulmonary fibrosis – we might have made at least some sort of difference for the better.  As it is,  we so admire how he carried on as well as he did.  Dennis has not been entirely well for probably the last eight or nine months – fighting serious sore throats and bad coughts  and mentioning various tests – but he seemed actually to be on the mend when he came for his last visit, right around the 4th of July.  Never in a million years would I have ever guessed that when we said goodbye that day, it was for the last time.

I am tremendously grateful for a couple of things.  First of all, I am glad that I have recordings of many of Dennis’ visits to the Morning Show.   (I’ll have to pull a couple of favorite cuts from them and put them on the website.)   Those are momentos which I will always cherish.  Second, I’m happy that Kathy and I had the pleasure of dining out with Dennis on one of his review expeditions.  We went with him to a restaurant in Kenosha called Bombay Louie’s – and it was so fun to see him in action.  There were a few rules such as : we could not call him Dennis. . . We all had to order something different from our table-mates, and we had to allow Dennis to sample everything on our plates if he so chose. . .  but otherwise it was a great night of fun and good food- and Dennis’ newspaper even picked up the tab!   Third,  I am so thankful that Dennis’ last visit to the morning show right around July 4th was one of this best visits ever.  The phone rang off the wall the entire time-  unlike the previous visit when for some strange reason the phone never rang even once and we had to contend ourselves with a couple of questions that came in via email.  But this last visit was a splendid feast of listener calls – and Dennis fielding each and every question like the brilliant pro that he was.   He will be tough to replace. . .  in fact, impossible to replace.  And Dave McGrath and I will be grieving this loss for a long long time to come.

pictured above:  the lovely meal served at Carthage’s honors brunch.