A Thief'S Waltz

Victor Lundberg (September 2, 1923 – February 14, 1990) was an American radio personality. He is best known for a spoken-word record called "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son", which became an unlikely Top 10 hit in 1967. Lundberg was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was a newscaster at Grand Rapids radio station WMAX when he released "An Open Letter" in September 1967. The lyrics, written by Robert R Thompson and produced by Jack Tracy, imagine the narrator talking to his teenage son. (In real life, Lundberg had at least one male teenager in his household at the time.) Lundberg touches on hippies, the Vietnam War, and patriotism. The voice-over, spoken over "Battle Hymn of the Republic", after empathizing, somewhat, with a number of the typical teenage concerns of the day, turns more conservative and memorably ends with Lundberg telling his son that, if the teen burns his draft card, then he should "burn [his] birth certificate at the same time. From that moment on, I have no son."

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