(CNN) -- I've never been one to attend the performances of symphony orchestras, but off and on, for more than 35 years, I gave myself the gift of something even better: Paul Harvey received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush in 2005. I would go and sit with Paul Harvey as he broadcast his radio show. It was music; it was thrilling. I met him in the early 1970s, when I was a young newspaper reporter in Chicago, and that's when he allowed me, for the first time, to sit silently in his studio as he did his work. Over the years, whenever I felt a need for a Paul Harvey fix, he was always welcoming, and we came to know each other well. I would sit there wordlessly and observe absolute excellence.
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Bob Greene: I was privileged to watch Paul Harvey prepare and deliver the news
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He says Harvey wrote his own scripts and was a master of spare language
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Greene: Harvey was a craftsman who words were flawlessly delivered
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And he would look down at those words that had come out of his typewriter minutes before -- some of them underlined to remind him to punch them hard -- and they became something grander than ink on paper, they became the song, the @placeholder symphony.