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American Express Representative (0:00)
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Paul Harvey (0:30)
Rest of the Story Larry was born on a farm. He grew up on a farm, yet he was a farm boy in that sense only. Otherwise he just never quite fit in. He expected to become a farmer like his daddy and his brothers. The family was so poor that every able bodied farmhand was needed, but Larry was different from the rest of them. Larry had an obsession with music. The others like music, but Larry loved it so much that he would concentrate on little else. For example, at a young age, as early as three, his older sisters recall, Larry was trying to make musical instruments. When he was old enough to climb up into the hayloft, he would hide up there in the shadows, and from an old box and a few strands of horse hair, he would attempt to construct a violin. He had always disliked farm chores, milking in particular. So to relieve the tedium, he would manipulate the cow's udders in a lilting musical rhythm. He syncopated the squirts, and that seemed to please everyone except the cows. Annoyed by Larry's musical milking technique, the cows would slap him with their tails or even kick over the milk pails. As the years passed, Larry felt increasingly inferior to the rest of the family. Indeed, he was the smallest, the skinniest, the least adept, and in his own opinion, the least attractive of all of them. With all of the music going on in his head, he was often unable to accomplish even the simplest farm tasks. And then one hot summer night when Little Larry was 11, he awakened clutching his right side in pain. Chills and waves of nausea followed. In the morning, his parents decided he must be taken to the hospital. The nearest was 75 miles away. By the time he got there, the situation was obvious. Appendicitis. Doctors operated immediately, but not before the child's appendix had ruptured. See, there was no penicillin in those days. The only cure for blood poisoning was prayer. So Larry's family prayed through his weeks in a coma. Weeks in a coma, and then months in bed through a full year of recuperation. By this time, the youngster was back on his feet and he'd done a lot of praying on his own. His recovery had been nothing less than a miracle. And so, having been given this second chance, little Larry became determined to spend the rest of his years as God saw fit. So guide me, the boy prayed. Use my life in ways that will please you most. Well, it has been 76 years since that prayer was first uttered in 1914, and it came to pass this June, a group of organizers broke ground in Strasbourg, North Dakota, for a museum bearing Larry's name. A museum which is going to open its doors in June of next year. And do you know that it's built on the site of that same family farm where that small boy once milked cows in musical rhythm? Little Larry might have and would have stayed there on the farm, but another path was illumined before him, a path which led the misfit farm boy away from his home and into the hearts of millions of us. Generations of television viewers have known only what they have seen on the iridescent screen. But now I hope that you will always picture a small boy in a hayloft, trying to make an old box and a few strands of horse hair sing. The youngster's name, you see, was Lawrence Welk. And now you know the rest of the story.