Remembering Writer, Commentator Leon Wynter

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

At 6-foot-7, Leon Wynter was the tallest commentator this program ever had - and the smoothest talking.

(Soundbite of archived audio)

Mr. LEON WYNTER: Middle age begins when you stop counting forward from birth, and begin to reckon your days backward from death. At 43, the news comes just in time to be true.

SIEGEL: Leon Wynter related that observation on this program in 1997. He died just a few weeks ago of a brain tumor, at age 57.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Leon had a keen interest in America's multicultural society, and he viewed it from the perspective of a black man, a child of immigrants, and as a banker.

SIEGEL: He worked for a time in commercial finance, and he wrote the book "American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America."

NORRIS: Leon Wynter was also a journalist who once worked at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. That's how I first crossed paths with him. You only had to spend a few minutes with him to see that he was a big man with big passions - for his beloved Bronx, for baseball and for his family.

SIEGEL: He wrote with good humor about pop culture, and great candor about more personal matters: from his Jamaican family roots and romance gone wrong, to one of his greatest loves: music.

(Soundbite of archived audio)

Mr. WYNTER: I hear Miles playing Monk straight, no vibrato, the same recording that hypnotized me as a boy. Only now, I'm thinking about a Talking Heads lyric that asks: Well, how did I get here?

(Singing) Letting the days go by. Letting the water hold me down.

NORRIS: Former ALL THINGS CONSIDERED commentator Leon Wynter. He died last month. He was 57.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.