Remembering Howard Stern’s Dad, Ben, Who Died in July at 99
variety.comMalina Saval Associate Editor, Features Howard Stern’s return to his SiriusXM morning show after a summer off the air arrived with news that his father, Ben Stern, died recently at the age of 99, shortly after his July birthday. “My father, as it turned out, had prostate cancer and it has metastasized to his bones,” revealed Howard, who waxed nostalgic about his father’s love for “fountain pens” and “his desk.” For Ben’s final birthday on earth, he ate his favorite meal — Nathan’s hot dogs.
Howard also spoke of his father’s “secret” glass eye, a “handicap” about which Ben was resolutely private. “You didn’t ask my father anything,” said Howard. “He could blow up.” “I’m sad about it, I am,” said Howard of his father’s death. “My family is very strange.
I’ve given you glimpses and I’ve always made jokes about it. But I remember I went to my mother and I said to her, ‘Mom, I think you should go visit dad at the hospice — he’s dying.’ She’s like, ‘No, no, I’m not going.’ She didn’t want to go.
I said, ‘You’re going to regret this. You should go. Do it for me.’ That still didn’t move her.” Eventually, Stern’s daughter, Ashley, a nurse practitioner, convinced Howard’s mother, her grandmother, to go. “My mother got dressed, she went over to see my dad, spent an hour over at the hospice.
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