Clark an icon

To quote a lyric from Don McLean’s “American Pie,” April 18, 2012, was “the day the music died.” Dick Clark died, and with that sad passing a huge piece of our American pie sailed off into history. An entire nation mourns.

Who hasn’t turned on a TV from since the 1950s to watch shows like “American Bandstand” or ring in the New Year with this legend of everything good in music and popular culture?

I grew up watching “Bandstand.” My family moved around the nation a great deal from the mid-1960s to the mid-’70s.

But on Saturday afternoons none of that mattered. The kids would be dancing to the music. The man would come out to introduce the latest and the greatest; a man who never seemed to age at all. That show was all-American, all music and a staple for my family and I in whatever new state or on the road to one back in those days. A friendly face in a strange city or town that somehow made everything OK.

He introduced America to all sorts of people and acts that would later become legends themselves. The list is huge. If I took the time to list them all I wouldn’t have an article, I would have a book, a very thick book. Just off the top of my head I will list a few. The Beach Boys for starters, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and who can forget a very young Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, whose meteoric rise to international fame began on Clark’s stage. From rock to pop and Motown, Dick Clark changed American music forever.

Race did not matter. Gender did not matter. Even sexual orientation didn’t matter. Nothing but the music mattered. He introduced us all to the music and the people who sang and played their hearts out.

Through the years and across the decades the kids danced to it all. Those kids grew up and were replaced by more — generations of them.

He was a pioneer of TV and radio, from music shows to game shows. He rang in the New Year from 1972 through the present. And he never seemed to age. He was dubbed the “eternal teenager” for good reason. America’s “teenager” was 82 when he took his last bow.

He was much more than an icon, more than a living legend. He was right up there with all things American — baseball, apple pie and Dick Clark. I grew up to love all three. I will miss him. We all will.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.