Lois Nettleton passed away
 on January 18, 2008 at age 80

In a 2000 interview with Doug McIntyre, she remembered that one night Shepherd asked listeners to call if they had ever made up a joke, and as she had composed a riddle she called him, speaking to him during a commercial or news break, and told him the riddle. He responded, “That is the worst joke.  That is so terrible!”  She said that the question became a running joke of his on the air: “What kind of cereal do ghosts eat?” Many people guessed that it was Ghost Toasties, but no one ever guessed the right answer: Shrouded Wheat.

A little later he called her back for more talk, and over a period of weeks he began to refer to her as “the listener.”  ”Shepherd would say on the air, “Let’s see what the listener thinks,” and he would call her and they’d talk by phone during his program.

She commented: “I think what he was doing was so—it was unique and it was profound and it was real genius!”   She muses: “He was a storyteller in the true sense.  It just came from inside.  It came out differently—a little differently each time.”  Nettleton says emphatically, “I really want him to be
recognized for what he was—a brilliant genius. The wonderful, wonderful unique—the wonderful thing that he was.”

Thanks to Eugene Bergmann