A great writer has died: Charles Osgood, a legend at CBS News. He was 91.

Among the many blessings in my life, I had the privilege of working with and writing for “The Two Charleses” of CBS: Kuralt and Osgood. The experience was both terrifying and humbling — each was, quite simply, a giant in the world of broadcast newswriting; they were wordsmiths who achieved success and a certain celebrity in a medium, television, that existed for pictures, not words.

But Charlie Osgood was most at home on the radio. And for that, he was uniquely gifted. Charlie was,in his heart a poet, who crafted elegant and witty sonnets on current events every day for “The Osgood File,” his daily feature on CBS Radio.

He once wrote:

No television set that’s made, no screen that you can find,
Can compare with that of radio, the theater of the mind.
Where the pictures are so vivid, so spectacular and real,
That there isn’t any contest, or at least that’s how I feel.

Small wonder that he is often compared to Ogden Nash and Dr. Seuss.

One of his works, dubbed The Responsibility Poem, has been widely circulated, and could be considered a minor classic:

There was a most important job that needed to be done,
And no reason not to do it, there was absolutely none.
But in vital matters such as this, the thing you have to ask
Is who exactly will it be who’ll carry out the task?

Anybody could have told you that everybody knew
That this was something somebody surely had to do.
Nobody was unwilling; anybody had the ability.
But nobody believed that it was their responsibility.

It seemed to be a job that anybody could have done,
If anybody thought he was supposed to be the one.
But since everybody recognised that anybody could,
Everybody took for granted that somebody would.

But nobody told anybody that we are aware of,
That he would be in charge of seeing it was taken care of.
And nobody took it on himself to actually follow through,
And do what everybody thought that somebody would do.

When what everybody needed did not get done at all,
Everybody complained that somebody dropped the ball.
Anybody then could see it was an awful crying shame,
And everybody looked around for somebody to blame.

Somebody ought to have done the job
And Everybody should have,
But in the end Nobody did
What Anybody could have.

Charlie Osgood was a man with a sharp eye and a melodious voice, and a knack for telling stories with wit, precision and heart. We had one thing in common: a great admiration for E.B. White, author of “Charlotte’s Web.” One of Charlie’s great disappointments was that he couldn’t persuade White to sit down for a television interview.

It’s worth noting that Charlie graduated from Fordham, and was very much a product of Catholic schools, as he recalled a few years back in an interview with Catholic Review: 

Young Charles Osgood was in a terrible quandary. After a whole week practicing a Bach organ fugue for Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes in Liberty Heights, the 9-year-old makeshift virtuoso couldn’t get the music in his fingers.

Knowing he was sure to disappoint Sister Serena, a Sister of Charity at his parish school in West Baltimore who had asked him to play the piece, Charlie had to come up with a way out.

His solution?

He slipped into the empty church on Friday afternoon and unplugged the organ so it appeared broken.

“In shutting down the organ, I also was shutting down my guaranteed humiliation,” said Mr. Osgood, a veteran CBS broadcaster and host of “Sunday Morning,” in his new book, “Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack.”

“I was certain my sabotage wouldn’t be detected: Because the plug was so far from the organ, people would be mystified by its malfunction,” he wrote. “A perfect crime, the way a critic might have described my playing of that piece.”

Unfortunately for Charlie, the Sisters were shrewder than he thought. After discovering that the organ had been unplugged, Sister Serena asked the young man who might have done it. His response, “I think it was me,” was quickly corrected by the nun – “I think it was I.”…

…In a telephone interview with The Catholic Review, Mr. Osgood said his childhood world revolved around his parish and school. (Our Lady of Lourdes merged with All Saints in 1995 to form New All Saints parish.)

Moving to Baltimore from the Bronx was like moving to paradise, he said.

“I mean it when I say it that Baltimore really is Charm City,” said Mr. Osgood, who lived in Baltimore all through his elementary school years. “I think there is a distinctive charm to Baltimore and it has everything to do with the people who live there.”

Mr. Osgood, a good student, was dubbed “The Professor” by one nun.

The nuns’ high expectations had everything to do with his success as a popular radio broadcaster, writer and television host, Mr. Osgood said.

“I do think these were extremely dedicated teachers,” he explained. “You can’t expect them to do that unless they are motivated by something other than a paycheck. They had a level of dedication you can’t expect in the civilian world.”

As for me, my encounters with Charlie were fleeting, collaborating a few times in the late ’80s and early ’90s; I was a vacation fill-in for “Sunday Morning” and sometime helper on “The Osgood File.” But the man I remember was funny, shy, kind and appreciative — a true gentleman, from a different time. When it comes to versatility, talent and sheer originality, I can’t think of anyone who remotely comes close to him today. He was one of a kind.

Broadcasting was better because of him — and poorer without him.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him…