OPINION: My unusual connection with Rush Limbaugh

In 1989, I took Rush Limbaugh's radio show off the air in St. Louis.

It was the worst professional decision I ever made.

In August of that year, I became operations manager of KXOK Radio, the AM radio station with the best daytime signal in the area and was given a mandate by ownership to convert to an all-news format.

Radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh greeted the Rev. Jeff Long following the funeral service for Mary Frances Hunter Kinder on Tuesday at Centenary United Methodist Church.Fred Lynch ~ Southeast Missourian

You must remember that Limbaugh's talk show was about a year into national syndication at the time.

I'm trying to make excuses, clearly, but back then, I didn't know what a radio rock star Rush would soon become.

Rush's producer in New York rebuffed my suggestion to push Rush's show into an evening tape delay because I was under instruction to make AM 630 all-news during the daytime hours.

"No, Rush doesn't do that, he always goes live," he said.

Limbaugh was getting us the only decent ratings we had but I had my orders and chose to be bullheaded in carrying them out.

It was either tape delay on KXOK or Rush will need to find a new home in the market.

"Well, if that's the way you want it," the producer said, "but you'll be sorry."

And I was.

Rush went on to become the savior of AM radio and I was soon out of the broadcasting business and enrolled in seminary.

Fast forward nearly 20 years.

As the senior pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau at the time, it fell to me to officiate the funeral of Mary Frances Kinder in January 2008.

Mary Frances had sung in Centenary's choir with Millie Limbaugh, Rush's mother.

The two women were quite close.

Rush flew in from Florida to be one of Mrs. Kinder's pallbearers.

He was introduced to me before the service, and I explained what I had done with his program back in the late '80s.

Rush nodded but did not respond.

Noting his cochlear implant and the noise in the vestibule that day, I doubt he heard me.

The next day on the air, Rush told of his participation in the funeral and mentioned me by name.

Fast forward a bit more -- to late 2008.

The collapse of the stock market hit Centenary hard.

All our financial endowments had fallen below the corpus, which, long story short, meant we couldn't use the money inside them for anything unless the congregation liquidated.

We were carrying debt -- and our largest endowment had been utilized for some time to pay it off.

That option went off the table, though, when stocks plummeted in that scary economic time.

Our choices were to pay the debt out of our operating fund or launch a debt-retirement campaign.

In regard to the former, this idea was a non-starter for we needed the operating fund to pay current expenses -- salaries, utilities, fund ministries, et al.

As for the latter, nobody wants to give to an initiative to pay off someone else's bills. In fact, no pastor I knew had ever tried it.

We were truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, to cite ancient Greek mythology.

One of our church secretaries came to my office and said bluntly, "Rush is a member of this church, his name is still on the rolls, and we need help. It's time to contact him."

At the recommendation of a member of Rush's family, I wrote the radio pioneer a one-page letter.

The exact wording does not linger in my memory, but I recall asking Rush for a specific and large amount of money.

I quoted the prophet Isaiah -- this, I do recall.

"And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land." (Ezekiel 22:30)

I asked Rush if he could be a "repairer" of Centenary's "breach" and build our endowment back up to the point where we could pay our debt again.

Word came back within a few short days.

Rush cut a check to the church -- and gave more than I had asked.

Without revealing the specific amount, the check was for six figures.

With one stroke of the pen, Rush's gift completely wiped out our debt service.

He asked for nothing in return -- no acknowledgment of any kind, simply that we vaguely note in the church newsletter that he made a memorial gift of an undisclosed size in memory of his parents.

Everybody gets that recognition, by the way, regardless of the size of a donation, be it large or small.

Since that day, my message has been always the same about Rush Limbaugh III, the radio legend I once stupidly removed from the airwaves in St. Louis: say what you will about him, but when Rush was asked to help his church in a time of need, he did it.

I asked him to stand in the breach -- and he was willing.

I will not forget.