The Ghosts of Christmas Past

This was my first full week of work in eight months. I was filling in at an online celebrity news site for Christmas vacation.  It’s ironic, because at my old job I was somewhat of a Christmas jinx.

Being Jewish, I was always called upon to fill in Christmas week for supervisors or colleagues who were taking off for the holiday. Year after year, it seemed as soon as I was somewhat in charge the world started falling apart.

Two years stand out in my mind.

 2004 It was early morning, the day after Christmas. I was in New York and it was going to be my first day filling in for the New York Senior Hard News Producer. I get a call on my cell phone from Paulette Brown, an Early Show producer , very sweetly and politely informing me that several people died in a large earthquake off the coast of Thailand. I will never forget my response. I said,” Thanks Paulette, but I doubt that’s a story for us unless the damage gets much worse.”  Little did I know I was walking into one of the biggest stories of the decade. When I got to work hundreds were dead, by day’s end thousands were dead as the damage and death toll from the worst tsunami in modern history continued to grow.

Fast forward two years, December 26th, 2006, the death of   President Gerald Ford. I was once again in New York filling-in. We were prepared for the death of the 93-year old former President and I carried around a black binder with names and numbers of contacts.  Still when it happens Christmas week it’s a different ball game. We had to call bosses in from vacation, hold emergency meetings and ruin the holiday for lots of folks.

There was the year a man dressed as Santa shot up a holiday party killing nine people, and the Christmas day a tiger killed someone at the San Francisco zoo.

Despite the tendency for bad news, there is something fun about being in the newsroom Christmas week. There’s a comraderie among the left behind crew, the people working while everyone else is off. And, there’s food, lots of it . Vendors send chocolate, popcorn, cookies, all sorts of goodies.  At The Early Show, we started a Christmas tradition, we would order in gourmet peanut butter sandwiches and eat them together in the conference room. When Christmas and Chanukah fell at the same time we ordered latkes as well.

At the newsroom this week, there was chocolate and there was comraderie but that’s where the comparison ends.  I thought of my colleagues covering the rain-storm that battered Southern California and the snow-storm battering the East Coast, but in the celebrity news world those were non events. The biggest news was Lindsay Lohan’s rehab tussle, followed by “Teen Mom’s” brief stay in jail.

 I confess, I had never heard of Teen Mom before, but hey that’s what google’s for. Despite the differences, it was good to be working again for Christmas,  good to know I wasn’t the Christmas jinx and good to know that writing news is like riding a bicycle.

A Fond Farewell

Last week, I sat at my computer crying. It happened while I was trying to write a note to Harry Smith after hearing the news that he and the entire anchor team were being let go from The Early Show.

Harry Smith's Goodbye on the Radio

  It had been a week of goodbyes at CBS News, not just Harry, Dave and Maggie, but a day earlier my long time friend and colleague Hattie Kauffman said her farewells.

                                                   

Hattie’s departure hasn’t made the New York Post or TV Newser yet, but it’s the lead for me. Hattie and I were a correspondent/producer team for 15 years.  I like to think of us as a little Cagney and Lacey like. You couldn’t have put together two people from more disparate backgrounds. I am an Orthodox Jew from New York City. Hattie is a Native American, the first and only Native American on network news. She is a Nez Perce Indian and grew up on her reservation in Idaho and in Seattle. We are the same age, but when we met I was newly married and trying to have children. She was already an empty nester.

For 15 years, we worked together, traveled together and put countless pieces on television.  Here’s what stands out for me.

From Hattie I learned how a great interviewer works.  Harry Smith called her the great empathizer. I sat in countless tiny living rooms in small towns across the West watching as Hattie held hands with total strangers, feeling their pain as they told their stories of missing children, of murdered children, of Aids, drug abuse, foreclosed homes, illnesses, sons and daughters gone to war, all the afflictions we don’t want visited upon us. As a producer, my job was to sit in the corner and take notes, to mark a big star when I heard the sound bites we were waiting for. But often times I forgot myself, as I sat engrossed in the conversation, tears streaming down my eyes, forgetting completely that it was an interview.

Hattie's interview with Betty Ford

Hattie- the adventurer. Growing up on a reservation, Hattie rode horses, swam in lakes, went rafting and hiking and did all the outdoorsy things you think Indian kids are doing. As an adult she rode horses, swam in lakes, skied black diamonds, went scuba diving, and ran marathons. Growing up in Queens, I did none of those things, as an adult not much more.  Whenever she could, Hattie pitched stories that would put her on a horse or take her on a Western adventure. I had to schlep along. When the networks were still spending money we did annual ski safety pieces in Colorado, we went rafting in New Mexico, and horseback riding in Montana and always there was a bathing suit and towel in the back of the car so she could jump in a river.

Rafting in New Mexico

On a horse in Montana

 Any Native American story was sent our way. On assignment we visited the Navajo Code Talkers in New Mexico, the Red Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota and Sitting Bull’s gravesite in South Dakota

Sitting Bull's Grave

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  With Hattie as our calling card all doors were opened. On the “rez” she is truly famous.  I learned about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce history, about Indian dances, and Indian giveaways and Fry bread and beadwork.  In return, I taught her about Jewish holidays and customs, synagogues and kosher food and we talked a lot about God and prayer and family.  On the road we searched for Native American pawnshops and kosher restaurants.  I found it’s easier to find pawnshops in Wyoming and Montana, kosher restaurants in Seattle and Denver. Also, the turquoise jewelry and beaded earrings I bought looked better on me in Wyoming than it does in L.A.

We found that in both worlds there is just one degree of separation. If there was a news story involving Orthodox Jews I would know someone who knew them. If there was a story involving Native Americans chances are someone in Hattie’s extended family knew them.

Over the years, I visited 49 states on CBS’s dime, most of them with Hattie.  We became great travel partners. She became a coffee drinker because of me. I indulged her passion for swimming everywhere. I was the faster driver, she was by far the better navigator.

Swimming in Red Rock  country

When we came back to our bureau we wrote and edited pieces we were proud of. What it means to be a reporter/producer team is to be able to do each other’s jobs. I wrote with Hattie’s voice in my ear. She would interview with my questions in her head.  It also means to cover for one another.  I can’t count the times that Hattie sat at my desk, texting an interview so that I could go home to my daughter. Likewise, I would finish an interview so Hattie could catch a plane to visit her kids.  We did that for 15 years, we worked together, traveled together and had each other’s backs.

Last week, CBS said goodbye to Hattie, Harry, Maggie and Dave. I worked with all of them, and I like and respect them all. Harry says he anchored CBS’s morning show in its various incarnations for 17 out of the last 23 years and I was there for all those years.  I left The Early Show in February but I’ve had a hard time letting go. All this time I still watched as an active participant, rooting for the people I consider my team. Now my team is leaving and it will no longer be “my” show. Although it makes me sad, I am finally saying goodbye.