Biography

Serving North Carolina

"Kay didn’t seek publicity," Georgia said recently, "but he gave the whole second half of his life to public service." Among his causes were health care, educational television and highway safety.

Disappointed with the condition of medical care in North Carolina, helped in a campaign to raise $62 million to build more hospitals and train more nurses and doctors in the state. Kyser and Billy Carmichael spent four years lobbying the state legislature to improve health care. Tapping into his entertainment friends’ talents, Kyser had Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore do a commercial for North Carolina to expand health care.

Kyser with Carmichael

After "retiring" from Hollywood, Kyser devoted his life to serving the state he loved, North Carolina. Along with Billy Carmichael, right, Kyser worked to improve medical care in the state, and to establish public television.

 
In 1946 Kyser spoke in 34 North Carolina counties in the interest of improving medical care in North Carolina, which had more men rejected for World War II service because of physical unfitness than any other state. Records show, he said, "that one-third of our counties do not have a single hospital bed, that there are 40 states in which a baby could have a better chance of surviving birth, that there are 38 states in which mothers have a better chance of surviving childbirth, and that there are 44 states with more doctors to take care of you if you have an accident."

Improving health care was an interest of Kyser’s when he lived in California, too. There, he also persuaded Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus to use movie stars as performers in a charity circus; it raised $1 million for a new hospital.

Kyser also had a hand in starting public television, working again with Carmichael to open a station in Chapel Hill. Thanks to his ties to NBC, Kyser acquired equipment and writers for the station.

Another cause of his was establishing a highway safety program for the state on the governor’s behalf. "He worked with a highway trooper who was named, appropriately enough, Major Speed," Georgia laughed. Today, the Governor’s Highway Safety Program encourages tougher seatbelt laws and uses random checkpoints to crack down on drunk drivers; the number of highway fatalities drops every year.

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A Tribute to Kay Kyser
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