Monica Price Kowaleski chats with humor columnist Dave Wolfsie after he spoke at the Rotary Club of Greenfield’s weekly meeting Thursday, July 27 at Greenfield Christian Church.
Shelley Swift | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — Now that he’s retired, famed broadcaster and columnist Dick Wolfsie has found a number of pastimes to keep him occupied.
Living in Fishers, he focuses on four simple things each day — jogging, playing pickleball, watching baseball, and learning Spanish — while also making time for public speaking engagements.
The Emmy-award winning writer and comedian shared a bit of his trademark humor with the Greenfield Rotarians at their weekly meeting July 27 at Greenfield Christian Church.
Wolfsie shared that the Greenfield Daily Reporter was one of the first two newspapers to ever publish his columns back in 2001.
“The editor told me I’d run out of things to talk about,” said Wolfsie, but that turned out to be far from the case.
Wolfsie has been spinning his humor through weekly newspaper columns for over 20 years and has written 15 books. He drew a huge following during his days as an on-air personality for WISH-TV in Indianapolis, where he was often joined with his trusty sidekick, a beloved beagle named Barney.
Wolfsie said his 1,200-plus columns are inspired by his everyday life, like the time he and his wife Mary Ellen showed up at a rustic inn for their anniversary and found they had just one relatively small double bed in their room.
“The lady gave me a wink and said, ‘It’s your anniversary. I’m sure you can make it work,’ and I said, ‘Let me tell you something lady. I couldn’t make this work on our honeymoon,’” Wolfsie shared on Thursday, prompting big laughs from the crowd.
“So we went to bed and after an hour or two I fell off the bed and crashed my head onto the floor. My wife, being the good person she is, got out of bed and put a cover on me, so I slept there the rest of the night. I knew as soon as my head hit the ground that this was a column,” he said.
Wolfsie, 76, loves to make people laugh.
Greenfield attorney Lewis Wooten said it was a pleasure to be able to hear such a well-known humorist speak at this week’s Rotary meeting, where he picked up a copy of Wolfsie’s latest book, “Deep Thoughts from a Shallow Mind.”
“He’s very funny. We’re very lucky to have him,” said Wooten, who called Wolfsie’s writing both entertaining and relatable.
Throughout the years, Wolfsie became as well known for the humorous columns he wrote as the humorous headlines he shared on air.
He shared a few on Thursday, including one that read “Seniors tour morgue, eat ribs,” one that still makes him chuckle.
He also shared the story of how his beloved beagle, Barney, came into his life one day in 1990, when the pup showed up on his doorstep.
“I love dogs — we had one at the time — so I brought him in and let him stay,” Wolfsie recalled. “When I got home (that first day) there was very little house left. He had torn down curtains and ripped up the couch. My son came downstairs with a (chewed) stuffed animal in each hand and said, ‘Dad, can we not keep him?’”
Wolfsie decided to take Barney with him to work at WISH-TV, and the rest is history. The beagle was an instant hit with the staff as well as viewers.
“Almost from the very beginning, people loved that dog because he was always in trouble. There was never a show that he didn’t do something really bad, like chew something, escape from somewhere or howl. And he would eat anything,” he said.
Wolfsie recalled the day Barney escaped his home when he and his family were away.
When he was notified, Wolfsie quickly made the 30-minute drive home only to find Barney with two sets of handcuffs on his paws. A police officer he knew had playfully arrested Barney after he was found snatching a Rotisserie chicken from inside a nearby Kroger store.
Wolfsie didn’t start out as a writer and humor columnist. He told the local Rotarians that he started out teaching 12th grade English at the same high school he had attended four years prior.
“The show ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’ had just come out, so people were calling me Kotter,” he recalled with a smile.
While he loved the job, Wolfsie took up the offer to produce a show for a television station in Columbus, Ohio after nine years of teaching.
The show host got sick and didn’t return, and Wolfsie was tapped to replace him, beginning what would become a storied broadcasting career.
“I was in the right place at the right time, so I was very lucky. Your whole life can change in an instant,” he said.
