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!