Doc and Katy Abraham were popular gardening experts on Rochester airwaves for decades
It's August and that it means its time to bring in the harvest from our gardens. It's also a good time to remember gardeners extraordinaire Doc and Katy Abraham and their "Green Thumb" show that ruled the radio airwaves locally for more than half a century.
The show, which was on WHAM-AM (1180), was a mix of gardening advice and down-home wisdom dished out by the husband-and-wife team who lived in Ontario County and called themselves “pretty much just country folks.”
Radio wasn’t the only medium they mastered.
"Green Thumb" segments also were broadcast on local television for 20 years and a gardening column with the same name ran in newspapers throughout the country for decades — including the Democrat and Chronicle. The Abrahams wrote a dozen or so books and were frequent guests at area garden shows, garden clubs, garden shops and bookstores.
But it was the longtime radio show for which Doc and Katy were best known.
“It was as unique a program as you are ever going to hear, a combination of gardening and lots of folksiness and poetry…but the show was a huge hit!” wrote Jeff Howlett, WHAM’s former longtime station manager, in an electronic message. “Their audience LOVED them!”
So much so, he said, that they deluged WHAM officials with “a huge sack of hate mail” when the show was suddenly cancelled in mid-1979 (before Howlett’s time there). A new boss “immediately brought them back on board,” Howlett wrote.
Doc and Katy Abraham grew up as neighbors in Wayland, Steuben County and both graduated from Cornell University with double degrees in horticulture and journalism. Doc — whose real first name was George — got the nickname as a kid when he decided early-on to become a plant doctor.
They married in 1942, during his 36-hour Army leave from World War II and moved to Naples after the war and ran a nursery. The newspaper column started with a weekly paper in Dansville around 1947 before it became syndicated and spread “like crabgrass,” as Doc once said. At its peak, more than 120 papers ran the column.
“I think every man has a mission in life, and I believe mine is to help people with their gardening problems,” Doc Abraham said in a 1966 Democrat and Chronicle story. Three years later, he added in an Upstate story, “Ever since I was a boy, I wanted to grow things and write about how to grow them. I used to pull weeds in a local greenhouse for free just to get practice and be near plants.”
He remained near plants his entire life with wife Katy right there beside him. Friends said they were inseparable, and Doc referred to their relationship as “a symbiotic, synergistic team.” The radio show debuted in the early 1950s and quickly caught on. Doc was the showman of "Green Thumb", while Katy played the straight one.
Concentrating on Media
Eventually, they sold the nursery to concentrate on their media ventures. They helped educate followers on the do’s and don’ts of gardening and helped pioneer the concept of environmental stewardship. They advocated for environmental friendly alternatives to chemical pesticides and for using fallen leaves as compost instead of burning them. At one point, the Abrahams reportedly got more than 200,000 “gardening requests” by mail annually.
Doc’s catchphrase, “Gotta Grow Now,” became the sign-off for the radio show and the TV show, which ran on then-WOKR-TV (Channel 13) (now WHAM-TV) for 25 years. The Democrat and Chronicle carried the "Green Thumb" column from 1960 to 1982. The first of many Doc-and-Katy books, "The Green Thumb Garden Handbook", was published in 1961.
A 1964, Democrat and Chronicle story compared the Abrahams’ writing style to an “over-the-back-yard-fence conversation on gardening problems.” The story described Doc’s nonstop energy at their Naples home, saying he “moves in an almost unbroken path each day from flower pot to outside garden to greenhouse to typewriter to garden hose to insect spray gun to spade.”
Honored in 1973
The Abrahams were honored as the country’s leading horticultural journalists in 1973 by the Men’s Garden Club of America. The slew of awards and honors they received over the years include induction to the Rochester Radio Hall of Fame and the Garden Writers Association Hall of Fame. Doc was head of the Naples Rotary Club, which was honored in a 1978 nationwide community improvement project for creating two miniparks. Katy was recognized by a Girl Scout Council in 1996 as a “Woman of Excellence.”
Along the way, Doc and Katy gave away plenty of plants from their Naples home to schools and others.
“Each year, for many years, they would ask me to go down to their home…on Memorial Day weekend, so they could load up my minivan with great stuff from their big greenhouse at their home,” Howlett wrote, “and I mean, load up!”
Saying goodbye
The radio show ended in December 2002, when Doc and Katy retired and signed off for the last time. WHAM replaced "Green Thumb" with another gardening show.
Doc Abraham died in January 2005, at age 89. Four months later, Katy also died. She was 83.
What better way to end this column than with some of Doc’s folksy wisdom: “America is a more beautiful place because of gardeners,” he once said.
Gotta grow now.
Alan Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
This story was originally published in May 2018 as part of the Whatever Happened To series.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Doc and Katy Abraham 'Green Thumb' radio show ran for decades on WHAM
