A Love Song as Old as the Cross
by Melanie Hemry
Len Mink’s hand felt damp holding the microphone as he walked onto the stage of The Tonight Show. For one silent moment, all across the nation, thousands—no, millions—of eyes watched and waited for him to perform.
Then, the music began.
As the first haunting strains of Billie Holiday’s song, “God Bless the Child,” rose from the orchestra, the crowd and the cameras seemed to recede. Len forgot his jittery nerves and sang with such joyous ease it almost seemed he was back at home in Virginia, his song echoing off the Appalachian Mountains.
As the music faded, the audience erupted into applause, shouting and cheering their approval. Then they leapt to their feet, granting Len Mink the highest praise an audience can give a singer—a standing ovation.
Len smiled and bowed as the crowd continued to roar. It seemed like he’d been dreaming of this moment all his life.
Len’s dreams had always been big for a boy raised in Marion, Va. As a youngster, his hunger for the world had been so great, he’d read the encyclopedia from Aardvark through Zywiec while in grade school. He’d poured over every issue of National Geographic. “That boy’s got wanderlust,” his mama used to say.
For as long as he could remember, Len Mink had wanted to travel and sing. Sometimes he sang for pocket change. Often, he sang for free; anytime, night or day. It was that willingness that had landed him his first big break—an early morning appearance on a telethon in 1968, two years before his appearance on "The Tonight Show." When Len found out none of the singers slated to sing for the telethon was interested in the 3 a.m. slot, he grabbed it as if it were the opportunity of a lifetime.
Sure enough, that’s exactly what it had turned out to be. At 3 o’clock that morning, a television executive, unable to sleep, had flipped on the television set in his hotel room. He heard Len sing, and offered him a job at a television station in Cincinnati six months later.
Although Len started out at the station as little more than an errand boy, he learned the business fast--so fast that within six months, 21-year-old Len Mink was offered his own television show.
***** article continues on p. 12 *****
BVOV : 11
