Ann

The Dalai Lama was tired and wanted to go to bed.  He’d been on a very long flight and he just wasn’t up to talking to another journalist…even if it was Ann Curry from the Today Show.  Lucky me, I was elected to tell Ann and her producer that the interview they had been waiting all day to get wasn’t going to happen until the next morning. At least she was first in line…that was the only good news I had…so I lead with it.

 Ann took the news pretty well, being the professional that she is.  For me, with the open time she now had on her hands, we could have a nice chat and get to know each other a bit. Like me, she was raised in a military family. Her career started after she graduated from the University of Oregon.  The tie to the Northwest, where she got her first job in television, seemed quite important to her and a solid connection for us.

 That conversation was the beginning of a relationship that has lasted for several years now.  It even saw us through two Olympics together…Beijing and Vancouver.  We were planning to connect in London and based on today’s news, it appears that might still happen.

 Ann is a warm and engaging person.  She is intelligent, well read and intensely focused.  Her deep-seated humanitarianism has taken her all over the world where there is conflict and strife. That is what brought her to the interview with the Dalai Lama on his trip to the US amid tensions in his home country of Tibet. It was the first of three interviews she has done with His Holiness and all of them have been very revealing about his views on politics and human behavior.

 A chance meeting on a connecting flight from Tokyo to Beijing gave Ann and me hours to catch up on our travels.  She loved hearing about the mountain and ocean projects that I have worked on because of her concern for the environment.  When we arrived in Beijing, we talked daily and then she invited Jane and me to the Today Show set.  We actually sat in two director’s chairs at the side of the stage.  We felt like royalty, thanks to Ann, and then talked with her well into the night in the shadow of the Bird’s Nest stadium.

 In Vancouver, she brought me right onto the Grouse Mountain set, standing next to her with the "gang" as they went to commercial.  We sat by the fire during the breaks and caught up on her preparations for the next Dalai Lama interview.  It was in that conversation that she first mentioned to me that there might be something new in the offing for her career. It may have been in anticipation of the impending decision for her to move into the co-host position, which happened a year later.  It was clear, however, that she had other plans in mind and they focused on her strong interest in righting the wrongs of the world and helping those truly in need.

 On my regular trips to New York, we’ve connected on the Today Show set and had long interesting talks over tea about the problems of the world that we knew we couldn’t solve.  But we cared.  She cared.  That may be one of the reasons she is leaving the co-host job at the Today Show. She has serious concerns in a business that is becoming more frivolous and celebrity-focused every day.  Ann may just be too good a journalist and human being to laugh and play games while sitting in the chair.

 In our last email exchange, she said “Just trying to do good for others, you know?” And I do know.  I think she liked being the co-host but, even when she was doing that, she was the first to volunteer to go anywhere in the world that people were suffering or in trouble.  I have great respect for her as a network news person and wish her all that is good in the world, however this turns out.  She deserves it.  I hope to see her again sometime soon and be one of the thousands who want the best for her and can say it in person. Damn the ratings!

26 Hours

He lies next to his brother. He would have wanted that, I think. Robert Francis Kennedy carried a huge burden for almost five years after his brother John was assassinated. Bobby was up to it though.

It was an electric time in DC. I was interning on Capitol Hill and quietly (because my father was a military man at the Pentagon and it might have rubbed off on him) but avidly supporting Bobby candidacy for President. Those times were the greatest influence on my political beliefs throughout my life.

I stayed up late to watch the primary returns in California. It was such a rush to see Bobby win and non-stop television coverage was in vogue so the cameras followed him off the podium and into the kitchen. Chaos ensued and you could hear the pops of the gun.

It was a surreal sight and the thought of another assassination was mind-boggling. Yet there it was, right before our eyes.

Not much is said today about the next 26 hours, but Bobby hung on. There were brief moments of real hope that he would survive.  However, the reports from the doctors were increasingly discouraging. It was excruciating as we tried to occupy ourselves between hourly reports. Capitol Hill and the congressional offices there are normally alive with the hustle and bustle and constant chatter of lawmaking.  That day it was quiet as a church.

He died on the morning of June 6 and a day later, Bobby’s body arrived in New York.  The Requiem at St. Patrick’s Cathedral made you feel as though you were one of the mourners.  The television networks didn’t take a breather throughout the entire ordeal.  Teddy Kennedy stepped out the shadows that day and his eulogy for his brother gave me chills.

His body was moved by private train to DC with thousands lining the trackside to pay their respects. I  remember people placing coins on the tracks to be flattened into remembrances by the train. It had to move so slowly that they didn’t arrive to Arlington Cemetery until well after dark.  The service was brief and very understated.  The next morning the small white cross was all that remained when I took the photo above (with my Kodak Instamatic) and, to this day, only a small plaque has been placed on the burial spot.

Robert F. Kennedy and his brothers John and Teddy had great influence on our country.  They are all gone now. So much of what and who we are as a nation was reflected in the lives of those men.  There were other assassinations that have marred our history. JFK and Martin Luther King, both were stopped short of their goals. Other Presidents, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley were shot by political idealists.  The details of their deaths are dwindling to postscripts in the history books. But for those of us alive in the 60’s, that 26 hours before Bobby died will not soon be forgotten. Nor will how those times shaped our lives.