Merri Dee: Choice to live best life was all hers

“The morning of July 17, 1971, started early, even for me. Something disturbed my sleep; something woke me up. The feeling of dread was so powerful, so overwhelming ...”

What has always stood out since that day in 1971 is a light behind Merri Dee’s eyes. The face of the longtime broadcaster, a civic leader, practically radiates light.

It could be from surviving being kidnapped, shot twice in the head and left in the woods to die, a life miracle the 76-year-old diva recounts in vivid detail in her memoir released this month, “Merri Dee, Life Lessons on Faith, Forgiveness & Grace.”

“The dread hung over my head all day long even at work at WBEE Radio in Harvey. It stalked me through my night gig back in Chicago at WSNS-TV. As the guest and I watched his assistant get into her car, I saw a man walking toward us ...”

A local broadcasting fixture for 42 years, Dee was born in Chicago on Oct. 30, 1936.

Her mother died when she was 2. Her stepmother was abusive. On her own from age 14, she graduated from Englewood High in the 1950s. Teen marriage was followed by single motherhood. Graduating from Midwestern Broadcasting School (now Columbia College) in the early 1960s, she landed her first radio job in 1966 at WBEE in Harvey.

“Following the gunman’s instructions, I turned left, turned right ... We entered the expressway and arrived at Beaubien Woods ... He ordered both of us to get down on the ground ...”

“I heard the first gunshot ... I felt the second shot hit me in the back of my head ... A third shot rang out ... The gunman then pressed the .38-caliber revolver to the base of my neck and pulled the trigger. The fourth shot lit up my spine...”

The guest, Alan Sandler, died. The story aired on “60 Minutes,” “Donahue,” “Oprah.”

From that first radio gig, the woman with the syrupy sweet voice and kilowatt smile rose quickly. She moved to TV as host of an entertainment program on then-fledgling WCIU-Channel 26 in 1968; left there in 1971 to host “The Merri Dee Show” on WSNS-Channel 44. It was leaving the Channel 44 station one night that she and a guest were abducted by a stranger who had stalked her. She cheated death.

“In the heavy moments that followed, I realized that I’m not dead. I fervently prayed, ‘Dear God, help me’. Instead of a great white light, I heard the roar of the ocean ... saw a vision. The man said, ‘It’s OK ... you can go back...

“I crawled on my hands and knees ... I crawled and crawled. I made it to the side of the road...

She saw headlights returning to the spot where she’d been shot.

“Oh my God, I have to crawl back to where he shot me so he won’t know I’m alive. I crawled back ... holding my breath and praying ... The car stopped ... for what seemed like an eternity. Then it finally drove off ... I struggled to my knees and crawled back to the road ...”

Cars passed by. No one saw her. Then a car rear-ended an ambulance in front of her.

It took a year for Dee to fight her way through paralysis and blindness. By 1972, she was back, hired by WGN as one of the first black news anchors in a major city.

Her assailant, Samuel Drew of Chicago, was convicted and sentenced to 25 to 40 years in prison but paroled in 12, after which he harassed Dee by phone.

She became a fierce advocate for victims, rallying state politicians to draft the nation’s first Victims’ Bill of Rights in 1992. Illinois’ was modeled by other states. Drew went back to prison after he was arrested in a stolen car in 1986.

“A life-changing moment takes practically all of your emotional, spiritual and sometimes physical reserves to survive. It is a moment that forces you to determine what you will or will not accept, and makes you choose how you will respond.”

Dee left the air in 1983. Today, she is Illinois president of the AARP.

“Resiliency. We are all resilient,” she says of her book’s message. “If you’re going to live, you have to be determined to live. If you have any kind of trauma, you have to tell yourself you don’t deserve worse, you deserve better.”