The receptionist at an Oakbrook Terrace hotel directs me to a back room, where the radio program Robert Frazen’s One on One, focusing on the media, politics, and entertainment, is taped every month. Frazen, the host and producer, has invited me to discuss movies. Describing the evening, he emphasizes its unconventional range. “There’s going to be the program, a dinner, music, trivia, prizes, and dancing,” he says.
With an almost evangelical zeal, Frazen says that when he’s moderating a discussion, “I feel serene and very joyful,” free and alive. Together his
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The other panelist, film writer Peter Sobczynski, and I are the only people in the room who don’t know everyone else. Frazen has cultivated a core group of about 8 to 12 people who show up religiously for every taping. Tonight’s is number 421 in a series that’s been taped and aired in various places over the years; currently the show is broadcast from Aurora on WBIG, 1250 AM, at different times on Thursday afternoons.
Once the taping is over, the evening turns surreal. There are four tables, and Sobczynski and I sit at one of them with Frazen. After dinner he returns to the front of the room and starts a trivia contest. But everything is a prelude to his “act,” belting out classic songs and folk tunes. His voice is decent, without much range or nuance, but he sings with conviction “Young at Heart,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Time in a Bottle,” and a number in Hebrew. Then he introduces his friend Maurice, an 81-year-old Chicago real estate broker whom Frazen has known for about six months. (When Maurice was sitting at the table with us, I asked him if he works for himself. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I want that commission check to go in my pocket.”) Taking over the microphone, Maurice lights into “Summer Wind.”
Frazen was born in Hyde Park and grew up in Rogers Park near Loyola University. He’s reluctant to divulge certain biographical details–how old he is, whether he’s ever been married. “I was always a different kid. When I was in eighth grade, I was president of a student club about Indians. I tried to get a bunch of my friends to go hear Dick Gregory speak at a church in Rogers Park.” He attended Sullivan High School, earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Northeastern Illinois, and is a few credit hours short of his master’s in education from Loyola.
“More important than having views, I think it’s important for others to have views,” he says. “I like inclusiveness. I think it’s important that people get their news from a number of different sources. Media people are like any other profession. There’s a group, and there are individuals within that group. Politically the lines between the parties have been blurred. One year a friend of mine was honored for her work in teaching, and I went with her, and Tip O’Neill was there. I had a wonderful time. I also read the Bill Bennett books.”
