Top of the morning

In the purplish predawn darkness, Ed Walsh introduces himself to Greater Boston.

"Happy new year! Good morning. Thirty-four degrees. Light rain falling. I'm Ed Walsh. This is what we're following on this first day of 2007 at the WBZ-AM (1030) newsroom."

It is the start of his show and the start of his new job. Walsh is delivering the news from the two-story WBZ studio in Brighton, where he took over this week as the morning news anchor, one of the more high-profile and coveted jobs in radio. His predecessor, Gary LaPierre , signed off last week after 43 years on the air.

With a crisp, clear, steady , and commanding voice, Walsh fires away with a fast-yet-resonant spark, like a human machine gun throughout his five-hour shift. During commercial breaks, he reloads with news updates.

There's the First Night festivities on the Boston Common; the city's 74-homicide count in 2006; the death toll in Iraq; the increase in the minimum wage; and the Bay State posting its strongest economic growth since the recession.

The new year looks promising for Walsh, a Natick native whose new job is a homecoming as well as a fresh start. Twenty years ago the former Duxbury resident worked as news director and anchor at Boston's WRKO for 10 years before taking jobs in Arizona and most recently at WCBS in New York City, where he anchored the station's 2006 election coverage.

"It's great to be back home," says Walsh, invigorated from the morning rush of news after his second day on the job, during which he stood and leaned into the microphone to talk about President Ford's funeral procession and the increase in Boston property taxes. "It's great to work at the station I grew up listening to. I feel very comfortable, very welcomed by the people here, and very confident that I will be able to do the job that is expected of me."

Those expectations are high. LaPierre was the station's signature voice for four decades. But Walsh isn't worried about comparisons, and neither are his bosses.

"He's got a presence on the air that I think stands out from most," says Peter Casey , director of news and programming at WBZ. When Casey culled through 97 resumes and audiotapes to fill the job last year, he was looking for someone "who sounds like they are in charge" and " who is giving the listeners the full diet of what has happened on the news landscape.

"Ed clearly has that," Casey says.

A week into his new role, Walsh has adjusted to rising at 3:15 a.m. on weekdays to be on the air two hours later. He's fueled by four cups of coffee and a desire to serve 500,000 daily listeners.

"It's like a guy who goes from being a taxi driver to a limo driver," says Walsh, who would say only that he is in his late 50s. "It's the same steering wheel, the same route."

That route to radio -- and specifically to WBZ -- began when Walsh was a sophomore at Wellesley High and would spend hours listening to WBZ DJ Bruce Bradley play the Beatles, the Doors, and Bob Dylan. When Bradley spun records at a school dance, Walsh approached him, but not with a song request.

"Is there any way I can see what you do?" Walsh recalls asking Bradley. With Bradley's blessing, Walsh had his father drive him to the WBZ studio on Soldiers Field Road, where he watched the DJ play records and reach out to listeners across Boston.

"I felt like he was talking to me, and that's all I cared about. I wasn't even old enough to have my license, but I had a chance to watch Bruce Bradley for an hour and play records, and that helped cement the radio bug for me," he says, growing exciting at the memory. "At its best, radio is a one-on-one exchange. It's very personal medium. It's between me and you."

He carried that bug to Holy Cross College, where he worked as a part-time newscaster at WNEB in Worcester. But he put his radio career on hold to serve as a naval officer on an aircraft carrier stationed in Rhode Island and then in Danang during the Vietnam War. Military service didn't silence his love for reporting. Done with his tour of duty, he worked in the late 1970s at WRKO in Boston, where he was the news director and morning anchor. His career took him to Phoenix as the host of the "Wake Up, Arizona!" morning show for five years. He eventually landed in New York City , where he was the morning anchor at WOR-AM during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He was heading into the last hour of his 5- 9 a.m. shift when the news broke. He stayed on the air through 3 p.m., giving residents updates and providing a familiar voice in the chaos. For his continuous coverage and professionalism on the air that day, he was honored by the Associated Press.

But he was also trying to get his own personal update. His son-in-law had been on the ninth floor of one of the buildings across from the World Trade Center towers. Walsh's daughter, a new mother, wasn't able to reach him for several hours.

"Everyone's cellphone was completely overloaded. We couldn't find him," Walsh says. "My daughter had just had a baby two weeks earlier and couldn't get in touch with him, and it took him a couple of hours walking back north."

Walsh and his wife, Chris, have three daughters who live in the New York area, but he's not leaving all of his children behind by moving to WBZ. Their son and his family live on the South Shore. And if Walsh has a rapid-fire, booming voice on the air, in person he radiates the gentleness of a grandfather. That's probably because he is one, six times over.

After a week in which he reported on the constitutional convention on gay marriage and the inauguration of Governor Deval Patrick, Walsh says he's looking forward to reporting about Boston's colorful characters, politicians, and his favorite team, the Red Sox.

"There are wonderful scoundrels and scalawags as well as statesmen, and all those stories are part of the fabric of Greater Boston," he says. "This is fun. The fact that it's so much fun to do makes it really no big chore to get up in the morning."

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com.