Dave Davies reflects on WHYY’s role in MOVE Commission, top Fresh Air interviews

WHYY is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year and as we look back at the decades, executive producer Kevin McCorry sat down with members of the staff to discuss some of their unforgettable memories at the station. 

In this edition: Dave Davies takes us back to the key role WHYY played in a pivotal moment in the history of Philadelphia: 1985’s MOVE bombing. He also highlights some of his favorite interviews as host on “Fresh Air,” including Jerry Seinfeld, Nicolas Cage and Maggie Smith.

Below is a transcript.

KEVIN MCCORRY: Dave Davies started at WHYY the way many of us did: willing to work for free.

DAVE DAVIES: I decided that a career in journalism would be cool if I could somehow pull it off, and I walked into the radio station and said, can I volunteer?

MCCORRY: It was the early 1980s. He was in his late 20s by then.

MCCORRY INTERVIEWING: You had a bunch of different jobs before that, right?

DAVIES: Oh yeah. I taught school, I worked as a welder in a shipyard, I drove a cab, I did a lot of things.

MCCORRY: Dave learned the ropes from a newsroom he says was brimming with creativity.

DAVIES: We had a 30-minute news magazine every night of the week from 6-6:30 called “91 Report.” They were really talented people and I learned a ton watching them. 

MCCORRY: Dave landed a full-time reporting gig and only a few years into his journalism career found himself covering one of the biggest Philadelphia stories of the century. This was 1985.

DAVIES ARCHIVE CLIP FROM WHYY’S BROADCAST OF THE MOVE COMMISSION HEARINGS: Good morning and welcome again to WHYY’s live coverage of the public hearings of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission. The 11-member panel that….

DAVIES: The confrontation with the radical group MOVE, I mean, there was a long history, but in May of 1985, they had occupied a house in West Philadelphia on Osage Avenue and created so many problems that their neighbors demanded that the city come and get them out. And eventually, the city organized a huge police operation, evacuated neighbors from the community, and couldn’t get the group evicted with a morning assault that included a lot of gunfire. And in the afternoon, ended up dropping an explosive on the roof, which led to a fire, which went out of control, burned a block and a half of houses down, and killed 11 of the 13 move members and children in the house. It was a horrific tragedy and there was a lot of terrible official misconduct.

MCCORRY: In the aftermath, the city created a Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate what went wrong. WHYY pitched the idea that it could host the commission and broadcast the hearings live on 91FM and TV-12.

WHYY ANNOUNCER VOICE FROM 1985 BROADCAST: Coming up next, live coverage of the move commission press conference.

DAVIES ASKING QUESTIONS 1985: Dave Davies from WHYY and I would like to follow up on that point because it would seem to me that…

DAVIES: It was remarkable. I mean, the hearing had neighbors who felt so tormented by MOVE that they really wanted them out.

COMMISSIONER IN 1985: Where were those speakers in relationship to your bedroom?

LLOYD WILSON:  Right in the window.

MCCORRY: This was Lloyd and Lucretia Wilson, who lived adjacent to the MOVE property on Osage Avenue.

LLOYD WILSON: It’s one thing to be two blocks away and hear it, but [it’s another thing] to live right next door, full blast.

LUCRETIA WILSON: Then we had to contend with things inside our house. Bugs that – you couldn’t do anything about them. I mean, they just totally – the bugs took over our house.

DAVIES: They had relatives of move members who had died there talking about what happened.

LOUISE JAMES: When you have finished weighing, assessing, judging, speak to me, my family.  

MCCORRY: This was Louise James, whose 26 -year -old son was killed in the fire.

LOUISE JAMES: Convince us that the bombing, the cold-blooded murder of 11 human beings was justified. You can’t do it, and you will never be able to do it.

MCCORRY: Here was then police Commissioner Gregore Sambor.

SAMBOR: I applied the force that was necessary to exert and do the job that I was empowered and instructed to do.

MCCORRY: This was then Fire Commissioner William Richmond.

RICHMOND: The squirts could have knocked somebody off that roof. And until a police officer or someone told us that that’s no longer a consideration, we had to be careful what those squirts were doing.  

COMMISSION MEMBER: Then you were waiting for someone to tell you that you could start fighting the fire, right? 

RICHMOND: That’s your words. If that’s what you’re looking for me to say, I can’t say it.

MCCORRY: Here was then mayor Wilson Goode answering questions from commission member Henry Ruth, a former federal prosecutor.

GOODE:  If anyone had come to me and said to me, I’m going to drop a bomb on a rowhouse, I would, in fact, have rejected that out of hand…If what you’re asking me is whether or not I feel that I could have made a better decision, the answer is yes. Did I make mistakes in the process? The answer is yes. I don’t know what else I can say other than, Mr. Ruth, I’m sorry.

RUTH: That wasn’t the question. That wasn’t the question. The question is, we have to find if somebody made mistakes.  And I didn’t hear that today, and that’s what I’m asking. 

GOODE: I’m sorry, sir.

DAVIES: A lot of people had a much deeper understanding of what led to that tragedy and how it unfolded because of what WHYY did.

MCCORRY:  The following year, Dave left WHYY to cover city hall for KYW Newsradio, and then did a long stint at the Daily News as a political reporter. All the while he kept up a relationship with the station as a frequent guest and then fill in host on Radio Times…..and Fresh Air.

CLIP OF DAVIES GUEST HOSTING FRESH AIR IN 2007: This is “Fresh Air.” I’m Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, filling in this week for Terry Gross.

MCCORRY: At first, “Fresh Air” mostly used Dave for shows focused on politics, hard news and sports.

DANNY MILLER: But over time, he’s become really good at the whole variety of interviews that we do.

MCCORRY: Danny Miller is the long-time executive producer of Fresh Air.

MILLER: He’s gotten really good at interviewing actors. And they like talking to him, too. Maggie Smith at the end of the interview said, ‘Oh, Dave, you’re adorable.’

CLIP OF DAVIES INTERVIEWING MAGGIE SMITH IN 2016: Do you want to take one question about Harry Potter, or would you rather be released?

SMITH: I would rather be released. I think you’ve been adorable. (LAUGHTER)

DAVIES: Okay. Well, no, I don’t know about that. (LAUGHTER)

MCCORRY: Other highlights include Jerry Seinfeld in 2007.

CLIP OF DAVIES INTERVIEWING JERRY SEINFELD IN 2007: People use moments and lines from that series to describe what’s going on in their lives. You’re aware of this phenomenon.

SEINFELD: I am, but I don’t get it. I mean, it mystifies me as much as you. I’m only happy that it’s doing something for somebody. (LAUGHTER)

DAVIES: He was exactly the guy that you see. ‘I know’ (Seinfeld impression). That guy. (LAUGHTER).

MCCORRY: And Nicholas Cage from 2023.

DAVIES INTERVIEWING CAGE: It’s been widely reported that you had, at a certain point, a lot of debts, some to the IRS. And I mean, you have had five marriages. I mean, those are a lot of commitments. You ever thought you had an issue with impulse control?

CAGE: Probably. (LAUGHTER) I mean, you know, you live and learn. And, you know, I started very young. And thankfully, I’ve paid everybody back and I’ve worked my way out of it. 

MILLER: It wasn’t only his great interviews and his great craft at being a broadcaster. It was also that he really cared. I mean, he really cares about the station, about the show. A total mensch when it comes to being somebody that we can and still do depend on.

DAVIES: There came a point where it seemed like the logical thing to do to come home. I came back in 2010 full time and never quite left.

MCCORRY: For me and many of my contemporaries, Dave was a north star. Always about the work, never about the BS. Do quality and be quality…and his example has now spread roots throughout the media landscape.

COLANERI: I remember having this idea that the best journalists had to be these like hard, tough, very gruff people.

MCCORRY: Katie Colaneri was a reporter and then assistant news director at WHYY for 9 years, and now edits longform projects for New Hampshire Public Radio.

COLANERI: Dave completely shattered that stereotype for me. He was just as kind as could be, you know, even when he was asking really tough questions to these sources on the phone.

MCCORRY: Bobby Allyn covered courts for WHYY and now is NPR’s tech correspondent.

ALLYN: Sitting close to him, it was just truly an education in how to be a better journalist and a more compassionate human. Not to mention how to make inroads into the corridors of power. I mean, people with influence like Dave and respond to Dave because he’s almost on a cellular level, one of the fairest people I have ever met.

MCCORRY: Looking back is not something Dave does often, mostly because, despite some of his instincts, he’s still deeply immersed in the work of the present.

MCCORRY INTERVIEWING: And you’ve retired a few times.

DAVIES: Yeah, I retire about every two years. (LAUGHTER) I’ve scaled back my kind of formal relationship with the station, but I’m always happy to come back and I love it. I love being here, love feeling that sense of public service and just working on content that we think is original and meaningful.