Today’s celebrity passing news: at age 82, legendary radio DJ, animated voice actor, TV host, and professional list caretaker Casey Kasem passed away early this morning after extended illness and an unsightly captivity in unsavory media headlines that I didn’t want to read. Lord willing, it’d be awfully swell to see all that in-fighting between his relatives disappear from our front pages forever.

As previously cited on Midlife Crisis Crossover in an entry about the joys of writing lists: “Casey Kasem’s American Top 40…had a profound impact on my childhood.” Syndicated reruns of that long-running radio show are still airing each week on both commercial and satellite radio if you know where to tune. Here in Indianapolis, they’re on B105.7 Sunday mornings from 8 a.m. to noon, pleasant accompaniment for my early drives.

But that impact went beyond my list-making proclivities.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, Indiana: Top 10 Things I’ll Remember About Casey Kasem:

10. That kindly uncle’s voice, soothing and hypnotic and uniquely him.

9. Treated every musical act respectfully and kept mum on his personal favorites.

8. In the bottom half of the Top 40, he frequently introduced us to songs our local radio stations never played.

7. Proved Cliff Huxtable didn’t have a monopoly on sensible sweaters.

6. Smooth-talked me into collecting vinyl 45s from 1983 to 1985.

5. Knew how to withhold key info until the end of a ten-minute anecdote, leaving you in suspense and shouting at your radio, “WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHO IS IT? WHO?”

4. His trademark signoff “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!” was much more inspirational than “That’s the news and I am outta here!” or “Have your pets spayed or neutered!”

3. So cool and unflappable, he could introduce songs like “Da’ Butt” without cracking up like a junior high kid.

2. His “Long Distance Dedications” were the most touching use of FM airwaves ever.

And the number one Thing I’ll Remember About Casey Kasem:

1. He made trivia sound like the most fascinating thing in the world.

(For further reading, Will Bunch from the Philadelphia Daily News wrote a piece today that nails what Kasem meant to his generation and mine, and why subsequent generations will be poorer for having no equivalent to call their own. He loves ’70s music a lot more than I do, but it’s sweet and dead-on.)