Ludlow was a class act, pure and simple. We carried his show for many happy years on our station, and losing it during a format flip was one of my biggest disappointments. Ludlow and Denny once invited me and my colleague Chris East up to his studios when they were in a hotel room in north Georgia. He graciously greeted us during a spotblock, then spoke with us a while after the show was over. He then gave us both a book. We asked him if they were autographed, and he said no, because he always thought it was very pretentious to assume someone wanted your autograph. He did, however, willingly oblige when we assured him we'd like it. The book I received was Lewis and Me and Skipper Makes Three, which was the tale of the life of Lewis Grizzard Sr, Lewis Jr (the "famous" Lewis, AKA to them as Skipper), and Ludlow himself. Lots of great tales in that book.
Another instance... I was searching for a very specific new truck, and had absolutely horrendous experiences at dealerships all over the state. I finally found a dealership up in north Georgia that had the vehicle. Given my lousy experiences elsewhere, I was braced for the worst... but when I walked in the salesman's office, I saw he had an autographed photo of Ludlow Porch on his desk. I knew I was in good hands.
The last time I saw Ludlow was probably around 2006 or so. We had briefly carried him on our 10,000 AM signal (in addition to his more-permanent carriage on our 1000-watt station). And even though we were no longer carrying his show on the 10k stick, some of his whackos had remained with us to hear our (admittedly pretty lousy) local origination talk. One of these was a lady known as Miss Conduct. She had fallen very ill and soon died. I went to the memorial service, and found that Ludlow and Nancy had made the 1.5-hour drive to attend as well.
Both times we had to drop Ludlow's programming, once to put conservative talk on the 10k stick, and the other time when we flipped the 1k stick to sports talk, Ludlow was still very polite to us despite the situation we were faced with.
He's a true southern radio legend, and I will definitely miss him. A friend of mine put it best... "Ludlow Porch was a class act in an industry that doesn't encourage it."