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Medal of Freedom Awards 12/11/92 [OA 7583] [2]
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Medal of Freedom Awards 12/11/92 [OA 7583] [2]
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Medal of Freedom Awards 12/11/92 [OA 7583] [2]
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26
23
2
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DAVID BRINKLEY
An informed electorate is crucial to a free democracy, and no
television reporter has kept us informed like David Brinkley.
Commentator emeritus of ABC News, David Brinkley has explained
the complexities of government to generations of Americans. With
and the wisdom of experience, he has informed our decisions and
held our leaders accountable. The United States recognizes his
commitment to truth and his contributions to freedom.
PAGE
7
107TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1987 The Washington Post
January 23, 1987, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE B1
LENGTH: 2761 words
HEADLINE: Our Times, With David Brinkley;
The Sage of Sunday Morning, Witty, Low-Key-and to the Point
BYLINE: Tom Shales, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
To increase respect for his newspaper, Charles Foster Kane recruited nine
correspondents from a rival. That was in the movies. In real life, when ABC
News President Roone Arledge wanted to boost the prestige of his organization
five years ago, he only had to hire one man. David Brinkley.
Since then, "This Week With David Brinkley, 11 the show Arledge used as bait
to land the acerbic veteran, has become the dominant and most widely admired of
the Sunday morning news-talk programs. And though Brinkley has brought ABC
ratings success as well as enhanced respect, he confirms that there are still
those in the news division who grumble about his low-key, nonchalant style on
the air.
"I've heard it for 30 years," Brinkley says, combining a sigh with a shrug.
"It's just the way I am. I can't change. I don't want to change. I couldn't
change if I wanted to. I don't try to put on a show on the air, be bright and
vivacious, because it's just not my nature."
He has reached a status in broadcasting that hovers between eminence and
legend, but in the earlier days producers persisted in trying to pep him up. "I
was doing something at the White House one time," he recalls. "It was an
interview with Lyndon Johnson. The producer was what's-his-name, Ed Murrow's
friend - Fred Friendly. He came over and said to me, 'I want you to be more
lively. And I said, 'Shut up.'
"That was the end of the discussion."
To show its appreciation for Brinkley, ABC threw him a big party this week at
the Willard Hotel, another longtime Washington institution, to celebrate the
fifth anniversary of "This Week." Twenty senators showed up, including Ted
Kennedy, Robert Dole, William Cohen and Christopher Dodd; the Ed Meeses were
there, the Bushes, Pamela Harriman, Elizabeth Dole and Mitch Snyder, who was
given the leftover food to take back to a shelter for the homeless. The top
brass from Capital Cities/ABC Inc., Chairman Thomas S. Murphy and President
Daniel Burke, also came forth to pay homage.
Fortunately Brinkley is impressed by nothing 50 he took it all in stride.
Asked if he can conceive of anything that, at this point, would knock him for
the proverbial loop, Brinkley laughs and says, "I wish to God there were." At
66, Brinkley has held onto his youth by remaining brash and irreverent; he's as
smart-alecky as a frat house wag, though incalculably more sophisticated. If the
best journalists are the ones it's hardest to put anything over on, Brinkley
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(c) 1987 The Washington Post, January 23, 1987
is peerless.
He is pleased about the success of "This Week, but don't expect him to leap
up and twirl a baton. "I'm very happy with it," he says. "ABC's been very good,
supportive, appreciative, and it's been fine. They don't want much. They just
want a program that does well, wins ratings and makes a little money. We're able
to do all that, 50 they leave us the hell alone. Which couldn't be nicer."
The program gets the best guests, makes the most news, earns the highest
ratings. For the fourth quarter of 1986, "This Week" averaged a 4.0 rating and
12 share, as compared with a 3.0/10 for "Face the Nation" on CBS and a 2.7/9 for
"Meet the Press" on NBC, the network that Brinkley called home for more than
three decades. Disputes with a former news division president, William Small,
drove him into Arledge's waiting arms.
The Brinkley show is well produced, and the supporting cast -- including
White House correspondent Sam Donaldson and commentator George F. Will -- is top
notch, but when Brinkley takes a week off, the show is simply not the same. It
lacks that abiding wiseacre sensibility that Brinkley brings. He is a kind of
walking, enlightened smirk. Actually, more sitting than walking. When he looks
bored on the air, it well may be because he is bored. How much fresh bull is
there in this town on any given Sunday morning, anyway?
"When you get the congressional leadership on, you already know everything
they're going to say, you know everything they're going to evade, and I know
there will be no surprises," Brinkley says sulkily. "And it's not really
interesting to me, and I'm not sure it's interesting to the audience. I don't
really look forward to that much."
Everyone wants to be on the Brinkley show since it is the most potentially
advantageous exposure. This acceptance has its drawbacks. "One little problem we
have,' Brinkley says, "is when a medium- to lower-level foreign dignitary comes
into the country and his embassy here hires a PR agency to handle his visit. And
very often, they will send to him through the embassy a schedule, and the
schedule includes an appearance on our program, without asking us or telling us
a thing about it.
"And then suddenly on Friday, the prime minister of something calls and wants
to know where to go and when, and we don't know what he's talking about. The PR
firm wants to show it's well-connected in Washington and can get the best Sunday
talk program. And so they have booked the guest on it. Then when he doesn't get
on, they blame it on us. They say we're liars and thieves and backed out at the
last minute and dah dah dah.
Another headache for the show is a guy called Sam. Asked if he gets a lot of
flak about the contentious, irrepressible Donaldson, Brinkley smiles and says,
"Yes, yes. I give all the mail to him. They say [he whispers], 'How come you
have that S.O.B. on the program?' I say he is there and he is lively and he is
interesting and he is provocative and that's exactly what WE want.
"He is also very intelligent. Before I came here, I didn't know Sam very
well, and I didn't have a terribly high opinion of him, I must say. I was
pleasantly surprised to find that he is extremely bright, very quick, and has an
excellent memory. Better than mine. He remembers what somebody said to somebody
3 1/2 years ago about whatever is being discussed. He's very good at that."
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(c) 1987 The Washington Post, January 23, 1987
The combination of Donaldson and Will is, says Brinkley, "like vinegar and
bicarbonate of soda. Sometimes they shock me with what they say." II Brinkley has
limits on fondness for video provocation, however. He dismisses the syndicated
and highly combustible "McLaughlin Group" by saying, "Too many people talking at
once. I'm never quite sure what they've said. It becomes incoherent."
Insiders say that while Brinkley may appreciate Donaldson's pyrotechnical
displays, he is closer to Will, the other round-table regular. "I wouldn't say
WE were intimates,' Brinkley says. "I don't see him much outside the office. WE
laugh at the same things, which is important. I think a literate, articulate
conservative is a rare find. George is able to look at himself, laugh at
himself, joke about himself. Anyone who can do that can't be all bad."
AS for his own political complexion, Brinkley says, "I have spent my entire
life avoiding being a liberal or conservative 'cause I think it's a waste of
time.' Has he felt closer to one than the other? "Yes. I felt more liberal than
anything else, and I am, but I don't make a big show of it. It doesn't help. It
really doesn't help."
If you describe him as a member of the eastern liberal media establishment,
however, Brinkley will plead guilty only to the words "media" and "eastern," he
says. He realizes the press is under attack more in recent years but hasn't been
in the forefront of those rising righteously to defend it. "To answer it, you
have to go to tedious lengths explaining what the press is and what its job
really is, which is a problem -- people don't really understand what our job is
-- and to say we are all nice boys and girls. I don't want to do all of that. I
don't find it attractive at all. So just let it ride. We'll survive it."
As happy as ABC and Brinkley are with "This Week," things haven't been as
harmonious when Brinkley is prevailed upon for other duties. During convention
and election coverage, he has looked uncomfortable and grumpy playing second
fiddle to anchor Peter Jennings, and the network seems to want Brinkley there
more as a symbol or a good luck charm, something to dangle, than as a
participant with singular broadcasting talents.
Asked about these problems, which have led to internal territorial
skirmishes, Brinkley smiles broadly and laughs, as if to say, "Oh no you don't."
He earlier had said, "This is now Peter Jennings' news operation, and that's
fine." Brinkley seems to blame Arledge more than Jennings for the messy way the
convention and election coverage has gone.
"Well, I grew up doing elections and conventions -- if I grew up - and have
been able to do them pretty well," Brinkley says, "because there are long gaps
between anything happening, and it gives me a chance to talk about politics,
which I happen to know about as well as anybody, dead or alive. I know a lot
about it. And it gives me a chance to tell stories and who people are and so on
and SO on.
"The way we all do it now, it's all about the same. It's hurry up rush, hurry
up rush, hurry up you got eight seconds. And you don't really have time to do
anything but read numbers and recite facts. So that's not what I do best.
Anybody can do that."
Last November, when the offyear elections came around, ABC and NBC pulled
back on coverage, opting for shorter reports interspersed with regular
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(c) 1987 The Washington Post, January 23, 1987
programming instead of the traditional marathon approach. Brinkley defends the
decisions (not rousingly, mind you) but clearly misses the days when the network
went on at 8 'clock and kept you in a state of amused anticipation waiting for
the results to start trickling.
"Mostly what we did is talk to each other and switch around the country,"
Brinkley recalls, "and there'd be somebody in the Starlight Ballroom at the
Howard Johnson's out on Highway 14, and he'd show you the bar being set up and
the Ritz crackers being laid out." He laughs. "We mostly just had a good time
and played, and we all enjoyed it. I enjoyed it."
The new approach doesn't allow for the idea that, in addition to everything
else, politics is fun. This is in large measure what has kept David Brinkley
interested for all these years. "It's essentially insane," he says. "I just love
it."
There always having been a shortage of wits in Washington, Brinkley is a
sought-after dinner guest. He says he is social, but not all that social. "I do
not like big parties. Don't go to 'em. Will not go to a cocktail party. For any
reason. I mainly like small parties where I already know everybody." A
Washingtonian since the '40s (he was born in North Carolina), Brinkley knows a
number of rules for taming, if not beating, the system. For instance: "Never
take any shuttle later than the 3 o'clock. It's the last semicivilized shuttle
of the day.' But then he would rather not leave town anyway.
As for navigating at dinner parties, he has other practical hints. "I worked
out one little trick," he says. "Somebody will sit next to me or near me and
take it for granted I know who he is because he's the assistant secretary of
labor. I do not know who he is. So a little trick I use is to say to him, What
are you doing?' He say, Why, I'm the assistant secretary of labor!' And I
will then lie to him and say, 'Oh yes, I know that; what are you working on at
the moment?' It works."
Brinkley lived in Georgetown with his first wife, but doesn't like Georgetown
anymore the too noisy, too crowded, no place to park. At the moment he is between
houses, about to build a new one in Chevy Chase for himself and his wife Susan.
An amateur but, he says, accomplished architect, he designed the house himself
and speaks enthusiastically of seeing it to completion. He is also a part-time
cabinetmaker, he says. It's easy to see how things requiring patience and
precision would appeal to him. He's a patient and precise kind of guy.
Brinkley's three sons are grown now. One is a Harvard professor, one works
for The New York Times and one works for Scripps-Howard in Washington. Outside
interests are important to Brinkley's equilibrium. He loves music, for instance,
and is a more-or-less avid concert goer.
"This," he says, leaning back in his office chair at ABC News, "is not the
only thing in my life. This is a job. I have other things that I like a lot,
other people that I like a lot. You go to work and do your job and then you
leave." Some who have worked with Brinkley find what they consider a lack of
zeal to be exasperating, but if he has been able to dictate his own terms all
along, more power to him. In television, they'll bend you and shape you as much
as you let them.
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(c) 1987 The Washington Post, January 23, 1987
Reuven Frank, who produced the trailblazing and long-running
"Huntley-Brinkley Report" at NBC (it ended when Chet Huntley retired in 1970),
says of Brinkley, "He's occasionally gotten away with murder in terms of ergs of
energy expended,' but also says, "He never did anything cheap," and professes
gentlemanly admiration.
"David's got plenty of credit for being a great writer, but not enough credit
for being a master of television," Frank says. "He's very good at handling a
picture. He's one of the few who will tell you what you can't already see on the
screen."
Brinkley's writing style is considered by many who'd know the best of any
broadcast journalist ever. It doesn't impress him because it is him.
"It's the way I've written all my life, since I was 16 years old working part
time at a local newspaper," Brinkley says. "I write the way I talk. And
occasionally, rarely, because something happened while I was already on the air,
and I couldn't write it myself, somebody's written something and brought it to
ME. Cannot read it. Cannot! Simply cannot. I mean, physically I cannot do it.
And it's not that the writing is so terrible. It's just that it's not mine and I
can't do it. I can't read anything that isn't mine."
It comes naturally but not always easily. Brinkley says his closing brief
commentary on the show each week is the hardest part of the program for him. He
comes in Sundays at 5 a.m. to start preparing for the show. The closing piece is
always the killer. Sometimes it's 50 funny that he breaks up laughing on the
air, and since Will and Donaldson are still sitting nearby in the studio, he can
hear their laughter and they will really set him off.
That is one of the endearing things about David Brinkley: how close to his
surface laughter usually is, 50 that he'll be talking along and, suddenly,
sobriety will crumble and fall to the floor. He's a lot less enamored of himself
and a lot less concerned with his own dignity than many of his colleagues in the
TV news business, right down to the goofiest weatherman on the smallest
pipsqueak station in greater Lesserville.
A man who writes this well should write books and for the past six years, off
and on, David Brinkley has been. He's putting together a book about life in
Washington during World War II - "the crush and crowding and craziness and the
fumbling and bumbling in what was then a small town, suddenly the capital of the
world. I'm the only one who covered the White House during World War II who's
still alive, I think. So I thought I'd get it all down before I die." He's
hoping it will be published (by Knopf) in the spring of 1988.
Brinkley has received many entreaties to cooperate or collaborate on a book
about the early days of television. He shies away from images of his
much-younger self on TV and isn't given to indulgent reminiscence. Besides, if
there's to be such a book, he'd rather write it himself.
He does remember the days when a print journalist going into television felt
a bit like he'd signed on as resident geek at a local carnival. The good part
was, nobody told David Brinkley how he ought to behave on television because
when he got into it, who knew?
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(c) 1987 The Washington Post, January 23, 1987
"Television was just beginning, and there wasn't anyone who knew how to do
it," Brinkley says. "I don't know anyone who's been on television longer. They
couldn't because it wasn't there. I just sort of worked my way on it and did on
television what I was already doing on radio.
"People would call and say, 'Gosh, we've got a good picture out here in
Bethesda. Never a word about what you did. It was the fact they got a picture
that mattered."
Asked to peer into his own television future, Brinkley says, "I don't see any
particular stopping point." Retirement? "It has never entered my head. I'll work
until I cannot work anymore."
Then he'll step aside and let the younger David Brinkleys take over. Except
for one thing. There are no younger David Brinkleys. There are no older David
Brinkleys. There is only one. He is not impressed. Those who know better are.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, DAVID BRINKLEY ON THE "THIS WEEK" SET. (DAVID BRINKLEY), HARRY
NALTCHAYAN
TYPE: BIOGRAPHY, INTERVIEW
SUBJECT: NETWORK TELEVISION; TELEVISION / VIDEO
NAMED-PERSONS: DAVID BRINKLEY
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36TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1991 The Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
November 10, 1991, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: TV Times; Page 14; Television Desk
LENGTH: 940 words
HEADLINE: Q&A: DAVID BRINKLEY: SUNDAY MORNING SAGE
BYLINE: By SUSAN KING
BODY:
David Brinkley, a veteran of 48 years of broadcast journalism, this week
celebrates his 10th anniversary as anchor and moderator of "This Week With David
Brinkley," ABC's live, award-winning Sunday morning news series.
Brinkley, 71, began his career as White House correspondent for NBC News in
1943 and has reported on every President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In
1956 NBC teamed Brinkley with newscaster Chet Huntley as anchors of NBC's "The
Huntley-Brinkley Report." The duo reported the nightly news for the next 14
years. In September, 1981, Brinkley joined ABC News.
Oft-noted for his wry observations, Brinkley has won every major broadcasting
award, including 10 Emmys and two George Foster Peabody Awards. Brinkley also is
the author of the best-selling 1988 book, "Washington Goes to War."
Brinkley spoke with Susan King from Washington about the state of politics
and journalism, and, of course, about "This Week With David Brinkley. =
What editions of "This Week With David Brinkley" are you especially proud?
It is the nature of journalism that today's sensational scoop is next month's
bore. This is a very fragile, fleeting temporary business we are in. Yesterday
is yesterday and we got another paper to get out or another program to air.
I have really spent my life not looking back. You can't. It was like an
editor I used to have at a newspaper, whatever I gave him, whatever I wrote,
however good it was, he'd say, "Yeah, that's OK, but what have you got for
Sunday?"
(After the show) we congratulate ourselves once in a while, though we very
often agree the program wasn't worth a damn. We get people we think would be
good and then they aren't. We have a little green room and we serve a brunch to
our guests (after the show), and then we eat it ourselves, and after the second
cup of coffee we stop talking about today and wonder what we are going to do
next week.
When do you begin to prepare for Sunday's show?
Friday and Saturday. We like to keep it close to the news and we like to keep
it live. We can't tape it, and I don't want to tape it anyway. You know there's
a little fact about television that I cannot explain, but I know it's true -
when you tape something, somebody always makes a mistake. When you do it live
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1991 Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1991
that never happens.
Being live you can really be a news program.
Has this year been the most newsworthy in recent memory?
It has been the damnedest year I can remember, with Russia collapsing and all
of the rest of it. The world has turned upside down in just a short time. The
other high moments have been the moon landing, which is so fantastic I still
find it hard to believe, and some others. There hasn't been anything like this
year I can recall -- World War II maybe, but I wasn't on the air then.
How has television journalism improved over the past four decades?
I think it has gotten better in this respect -- it is not that WE are any
better or any smarter, but the technology has advanced 50 rapidly. The
engineering has been 50 good that I alone can, and did, stand in the desert in
the Gulf with a little transmitter the size of a traveling salesman's sample
case and transmit directly to ABC's studios. It allows us to do a great deal
more and better than we used to. We covered the Gulf War better than we have
ever been able to cover anything like that because of the technology.
What were your feelings about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings?
There has never been anything like that on the face of the Earth.
I do know that somebody on the staff of one of the Senators leaked (the FBI
report). If (it had been leaked to me) I would have put it on the air. And you
know all the Senators said, "I didn't do this and my staff didn't do it." The
asterisk you need there is a member of the Senate really doesn't know what his
staff is doing.
The Senate (Judicial) Committee knew about this sexual harassment (charge)
and chose to do nothing about it. It was just one more damn woman bellyaching.
That's what they thought. They can't do that anymore.
I was in London a few days last week and it was the top half of page one of
the London Times, the Telegraph and every good paper in Europe that I saw. The
British were hanging on to every word. It was embarrassing. That is what they
think our country is like and to a degree it is, but WE never had anything like
that before and I pray WE don't again.
What do you think of President Bush's chances of being re-elected in 1992?
I am more than half serious when I say if you do not have a record of
felonies, you should run. I am serious. It is time for a woman and if the
recession continues and the economic troubles continue, George Bush is going to
have a hard time.
There are polls and polls and I don't know which I am quoting, but some 70%
say that the country is going in the wrong direction, which I happen to agree
with. It is not all George Bush's fault, but he is in office and he has to take
the blame.
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1991 Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1991
What I think is that a month ago it looked like a shoo-in (for Bush). To
think of anybody running against Bush would induce laughter. That is not
altogether turned around, but it has turned part way and it could turn all the
way.
Do you ever think of retiring?
In two or three years. I enjoy journalism. I can't think of anything else I
would ever want to do. Every day is different. Every day is new. Every paper is
new. Every broadcast is new. The alternative is some kind of paper shuffling as
a lawyer, and I can't stand that.
"This Week With David Brinkley" airs Sundays at 10:30 a.m. KGTV; 11 a.m.
KESQ, and 11:30 a.m. on KABC and KEYT.
GRAPHIC: Photo, David Brinkley, who marks his 10th year on ABC's Sunday
interview shows, says that in his 48 years of broadcasting he has never seen
such a tumultuous news year as 1991. ; Photo, COLOR, (Orange County Edition)
David Brinkley, who marks his 10th year on ABC's Sunday interview shows, says
that in his 48 years of broadcasting he has never seen such a tumultuous news
year as 1991.
TYPE: Column; Interview
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95TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1988 The Washington Post
April 8, 1988, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE D1
LENGTH: 765 words
HEADLINE: Brinkley, on the Town;
Celebrating the Broadcaster's New Book About WWII Washington
BYLINE: Marjorie Williams, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Not for nothing is David Brinkley's chapter on Washington social life
titled "Parties for a Purpose."
=
a rough estimate was that a fourth to a half of those at [Washington]
parties were, in one way or another, on the make, using an evening at somebody's
dinner table as a chance to lobby, to promote a cause, to find jobs for
themselves, to establish business relationships or to find law clients for the
postwar years."
So writes Brinkley in "Washington Goes to War," his history of the city's
transformation, during World War II, from "a city only a few generations out of
the mud" into the capital of the free world. As a reception in his honor last
night at the Ritz-Carlton suggested, those years established most of the mores
the city lives by today.
"It's an absolutely new experience for me," said Brinkley about the
unaccustomed role of author, looking as pleased as it is possible to imagine
David Brinkley looking. "I've done more talking and blabbing and lollygagging
about than usual for me."
And meeting, and greeting. Standing in a reception line with his wife Susan
and Alfred A. Knopf Editor in Chief Sonny Mehta, he accepted the obeisances of
social Washington (Evangeline Bruce, Polly Fritchie), Embassy Row (including
ambassadors from India, Sweden, France, China and Canada), media Washington
(everyone, including ABC colleagues Sam Donaldson, George Will and Hal Bruno)
and Permanent Washington (lawyer and former Democratic National Committee
chairman Robert Strauss with his wife Helen; former CIA director Richard Helms
with wife Cynthia).
Not to mention poker friends Henry and Jessica Catto, Lane and Irena
Kirkland, and Rowland and Katherine Evans.
All was graciousness: "I didn't mind covering Ronald Reagan when he was just
dull," said Sam Donaldson, explaining why he wasn't in California with the
president's entourage. "But I will not cover him now that he's dull and
irrelevant Reagan would be the first to tell you: When one horse gets tired,
you get on another.
Donaldson pronounced the book terrific ("I mean it"). Joseph Alsop, one of a
few other guests who swore they had read the book, said, "It kept me nailed
down." (One of those who had not read the book was Brinkley's son Joel, a New
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(c) 1988 The Washington Post, April 8, 1988
York Times reporter who is soon to become the paper's Jerusalem bureau chief.
"I've been too busy immersing myself in the Middle East," he said.)
Talk of the period covered in the book prompted reflections from those who
admitted being old enough to remember.
Said Evangeline Bruce, "The thing I remember most is the wartime - euphoria
isn't the word I'm looking for. And it sounds cold-blooded to say 'excitement'
about war. But you were 50 caught up in the forces of war
one lived more
intensely in wartime."
Journalist Sarah McClendon, who came here from Texas in 1944, said: "It was a
wonderful time. I started out [covering the White House] with Roosevelt, but was
too scared to ask him a question. I waited until Truman. But Roosevelt had
regular press conferences, and he had plenty of them, which is more than I can
say of the present one."
American Film Institute Chairman George Stevens Jr. remembered a trip to
Washington when he was 12. "We came for three days and stayed at the brand-new
Hilton. And then we went to National Airport to say goodbye to my father, in his
uniform. It was the first sad day of my life." (The "brand-new Hilton," on 16th
Street, was then the Statler, actually, and Brinkley's book tells a wonderful
story about its construction.)
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan waved away an inquiry, saying
he lived in New York then. "All I cared about was baseball. The only thing I
knew about Washington was the Senators, and not the ones on Capitol Hill.'
CIA Director William H. Webster was a naval officer, and never saw Washington
in the war. But his date, Ellen McCloy, dimly recalls living here as a little
girl. Her father is John J. McCloy, then assistant secretary of war. "We had a
little house in Georgetown," she said, "and I vaguely remember people in
uniforms coming to the house, which was very exciting."
Supreme Court Justice Byron H. White simply lit out for the territories at
the sight of a reporter, as justices will.
The New York publishing contingent was unusually thick, with five of Knopf's
top editors in attendance to celebrate a book that had 200,000 copies in print
before its official publication yesterday.
When Brinkley told a reporter, "It's my first book - and my last," his
companion from Knopf winced and said, "I wish you wouldn't say that."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, BRINKLEY, LEFT, FRANK F AHRENKOPF AND SAM DONALDSON. HARRY
NALTCHAYAN
TYPE: DC NEWS
SUBJECT: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; PARTIES; BOOKS; WRITERS
NAMED-PERSONS: DAVID BRINKLEY
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JOHNNY CARSON
The greatest talk show host in television history, Johnny Carson
presided over late night for almost 30 years. With a cool wit
and a sure golf swing, he took pride in putting America to sleep
for 30 years. He kept the pulse of the nation, and assured us
that even in difficult times, it was still okay to laugh. The
United States honors Johnny Carson for his many years chronicling
the American spirit of freedom.
PAGE
9
7TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
May 19, 1992, Tuesday, Final Edition
NAME: JOHNNY CARSON
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE B1
LENGTH: 2819 words
HEADLINE: Johnny, the Great of Late Night;
For 29 Years, Carson Gave Us the Last Laugh of the Day. Soon 'Tonight' Won't Be
the Same.
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: Tom Shales, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
He's the best Johnny Carson we ever had, and he's probably the last
Johnny Carson we will ever have. When Carson, 66, leaves "The Tonight Show"
after Friday night's broadcast, he'll take a style and a sensibility and an era
with him.
He begins his last week of "Tonights" tonight, ending a reign of nearly 30
years and seeming as fresh and boyish as the night he started.
We're saying goodbye to more than our nightly dose of Johnny Carson. When
he began hosting "The Tonight Show" in 1962, television was a kinder and
gentler medium. Nobody had 50 cable channels, and Carson's only real late-night
competition was old movies.
Now the great audience Carson aimed to entertain is splintering up into
factions, and no single performer is ever likely to be as dominant as he has
been for most of the past three decades. We have moved away from the consensus
comedy Carson practices and epitomizes and into constituency comedy. A
generalist is abdicating to a new breed of specialists.
In a way, Mr. Mainstream will be taking the mainstream with him. It has
already broken up into dozens of little tributaries anyway
"Carson is a once-in-a-lifetime situation,' ad agency executive Arnie Semsky
told Advertising Age recently. "To find somebody who could be that accepted over
such a long period of time is unprecedented, and we probably will never see
anything like that again."
Saying goodbye to Johnny is a little like saying goodbye to a president.
His monologues, celebrated as political weather vanes, were nightly State of the
Union messages, albeit funnier than the real ones. At the NBC studios in
Burbank, transition teams gear up for the change in administrations. No
constitutional amendment limits the number of terms a = Tonight Show" host may
serve, but Johnny's record of 29 1/2 years is likely to stand forever.
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He'll He certainly be the last host of a major network talk show to have fought
in World War II, or to remember not only the dawn of television but the rise of
radio. We are not just losing a comedian. We are losing a continuum.
"When Jay Leno assumes the top spot on 'The Tonight Show, it will be more
than one comedian succeeding another," James Wolcott wrote in Vanity Fair. "It
will represent the rock generation's completing its long coup d'etat of pop
culture, finally putting the jazz influence of the forties and fifties out to
pasture."
It's as sad to see this go as it is sad to contemplate night life without
Johnny.
"Don't think of me as leaving, folks," Carson said in a recent monologue.
"I'm just going on a longer vacation than usual." Naturally he has been using
his own departure as the pretext for jokes. "After I leave on May 22nd," he said
the other night, "I'm going to be flown to Wiesbaden, Germany, to be debriefed
by Jack Paar and Steve Allen."
Paar and Allen each took a turn at hosting "The Tonight Show. II Allen did
mostly comedy sketches. The volatile Paar was Carson's immediate predecessor and
the father of the modern talk show. In the media vernacular of Marshall McLuhan,
however, Paar was hot and Carson cool, and Johnny's cool has helped us make it
through 50mg very hot times since 1962.
Coolness has been key to Carson's astonishing longevity. He's hosted more
hours of TV than anyone else, it's been pointed out, yet he never risked
overexposure. He kept himself a precious commodity, partly by not popping up all
over the tube or in other venues, partly by staying out of the celebrity
limelight as much as possible.
He used to host the Oscars, he used to appear in Las Vegas, he has done the
occasional TV special, including a memorable one a few years ago in which he
revisited the Nebraska town where he grew up. But in recent years, the only
place you could really see Johnny Carson was "The Tonight Show. II It became
the castle tower from which he looked out at the world.
The alleged aloofness and remoteness of Carson may have been defense
mechanisms to keep that world at a safe distance - people who face audiences
regularly have to develop armor to keep from being devastated by rejection --
but they also proved to be good business. Carson's decision to reduce the length
of "The Tonight Show" from 90 minutes to an hour in 1980 was another smart
move.
It made it very hard for anybody to come across Carson on TV and reasonably
groan, "Oh, not him again. He was determined not to let you get sick of him.
And now he is leaving long before anyone has a chance to.
We've had months to prepare ourselves for this final week, yet it's very
clear that parting will be much more sorrowful than sweet. People went through
the same kind of thing back in 1981 as they looked forward with dread to Walter
Cronkite's retirement as anchor of "The CBS Evening News." But this is worse.
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Carson's reign dwarfs that of Cronkite and of just about anyone else. For
nearly 30 years, at a tender and delicate hour, his has sometimes been the last
face one sees before sleep. On an intimate level, he has cured innumerable cases
of the blues, alleviated countless depressions, mercifully interrupted zillions
of arguments. Now WE are getting a new video nanny. It's natural to panic.
"You know what this is like?" Carson joked about his job during a 1982
monologue. "It's like the challenge of death every night. It's like I'm standing
on the ledge of a 20-story building and the crowd is yelling, 'Jump!' "
Nobody's yelling "jump" now.
Hermetically Sealed Many of the stars appearing on Carson's last shows have
uttered farewell tributes. Some will obviously find a home on Jay Leno's couch
as well. Curiously, Bob Hope, appearing with Carson for the 132nd time
(literally) Friday, offered no testimonials or kind words to the man who had
played host to umpty-ump plugs for Hope's increasingly arthritic prime-time
specials.
Hope seemed alarmingly bewildered and enfeebled. Carson, looking at him, may
have had a chilling vision of himself 20 years hence. Carson is certain to
continue in television beyond "The Tonight Show, " but never again with such
frequency, and probably not into his eighties.
Carson protege David Letterman paid his own tribute earlier on that show.
"First of all, you're not passing away,' he told Carson. "You're still funny,
you're vibrant, you're charming, energetic, entertaining, a very nice guy."
Last year, during the fuss over Letterman's not being chosen as Carson's
successor, Letterman said from New York that he felt he owed the success of his
own show to its post-Carson time slot. "What I can't understand is why he left
after 29 years, why he didn't stay until the fall and make it an even 30,"
Letterman said.
Ah, but Carson always intended to stay at least through the fall. In April of
1991, then-NBC Entertainment Chairman Brandon Tartikoff announced a new one-year
contract for Carson that was to extend through September. "I'm thrilled he's
decided to celebrate his 30th-anniversary year with us," Tartikoff said in a
statement.
What happened? According to a highly placed insider, Carson was deeply hurt
when supermarket tabloids began running stories early last year claiming that
substitute host Leno earned better demographics than Carson when filling in and
that NBC couldn't wait for Johnny to step down. The stories reportedly
originated in Leno's camp, although Leno subsequently denied that.
"If he wants it that bad, the hell with it," Carson reportedly said. His
intense dislike for General Electric, NBC's owner, and the shabby way he'd been
treated since GE bought the company in 1986 compounded his resentment. He does
about one GE joke a night now, sarcastically referring to it as "the company
with a heart."
In December, he joked that he'd just received his Christmas card from GE: "It
said, 'In lieu of a gift, a GE employee has been laid off in your name. 11
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Asked one night by a member of the audience why the NBC logo is a peacock,
Carson replied, "I don't know; I guess they couldn't find a multicolored
weasel."
Reached in his = Tonight Show" office last June when his plans to step down
were revealed, Carson quipped, "GE already sold my parking spot to Fotomat."
He was asked then what he thought he might do for his last night on the show.
"Wouldn't it be funny if we ran a repeat?" he said. "No, I don't have the guts.
I think we should do it exactly as we started. In fact, he will spend the hour
reminiscing, with sidekick Ed McMahon nearby, and no scheduled celebrity guests.
He turned down NBC's offer to do the last show in prime time.
And why had he announced his decision to leave? "Well, it was time," Carson
said. "Nothing goes on forever. I've been wrestling with this for years.' A few
minutes later he added: "I see the way television is going. It's nice to go out
on top."
More to Come A gentleman drinker in New York said once that he never imbibes
on New Year's Eve because that's when "the amateurs" come out. Johnny's
ratings are up, and studio audiences are camping out for hours at NBC studios to
see him in person now that his departure is mere hours away, but many of these
are just amateur Carsonians, mere Johnny -come-latelies.
The pros have been faithful all along.
And they have come to know him as well as you can know anybody who is sprayed
by a ray gun onto a glass shield in your living room. So many mannerisms and
habits are iconographic now, from the frightened step backward after a joke has
bombed, to the way Carson says "pooberty" instead of "puberty," to his nervous
habit of scratching his right hand with his left during the monologue.
When three jokes in a row would die, Doc Severinsen and the band would
sometimes strike up "Tea for Two," and Johnny would launch into a desperation
soft-shoe. Oh to see this one more time.
Near Christmas, he always devoted a segment to reading letters that kids had
written to Santa Claus in care of the North Pole. And annually he would remark
that with the change of seasons, the green plastic plants in Beverly Hills had
been ceremonially replaced with the brown plastic plants.
It's the little moments one tends to remember more than any encounters with
big star guests or Carson's turns as Aunt Blabby (who retired long before Carson
did) or Art Fern or Floyd R. Turbo. Those sketches and characters were links,
however, to vaudeville and burlesque traditions not within the performing memory
of today's younger comedians.
And Carnac did occasionally get in a good one. The last answer in the sealed
envelope one night was "sis boom bah." And the question: "What is the sound of a
sheep exploding?"
The monologue was hailed for its politically barometric qualities, reaching
full glory in the '80s, during the Reagan years, which were 50 good to comics.
He's been awfully funny lately on George Bush, tweaking him for being a rich
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preppy out of touch with normal people.
After Bush did a photo opportunity demonstrating fly-casting to inner-city
youths, Carson scoffed at the irrelevancy and said, "He also showed them how to
signal from their schooners when they run out of Grey Poupon."
One night last week he began by telling the audience, "If tonight's monologue
bombs, it is not my fault. It's the fault of the Great Society programs of the
'60s."
But the monologue isn't all political or topical. It has its other reliable
ritualistic components, like joking about how cold and heartless the previous
night's studio audience had been: "They were the kind of group that would give a
condom to a panda."
Yes, a team of writers, including Carson, comes up with these jokes, but
Carson is the one who lobs them SO elegantly over the net.
During the monologue he was court jester, comic ombudsman, modern-day Will
Rogers and, of course, matador. No matter how big and successful he got, you
always felt that the success of each joke mattered to him. He was like a
politician facing second-by-second poll-taking, anxiously following each little
dip in the curve, making a critical review of his own performance a part of the
performance.
Nobody could make unfunny jokes funnier than Johnny. Nobody ever drew so
much blood from turnips or turned 50 many sow's ears into silk purses.
Some would say his concepts are dated, especially when it comes to
male-female relations, but he kept adapting to change with amazing versatility.
Mean-spirited "Saturday Night Live" sketches have accused him of the unspeakable
crime of being unhip, but as he is cool beyond cool, 50 Carson exits seeming hip
beyond hip, SO hip as to make customary hipness measurements irrelevant.
Besides, he's like an uncle now. Who cares how hip an uncle is? If the guy
makes you laugh, you love him.
Cold and Aloof In person, "The Tonight Show" was usually a disappointment.
The set that seems large on TV looks unimpressive from the radically raked seats
of Studio 1 at NBC in Burbank. The Carson show is meant to be experienced in
medium shots and close-ups, not from a distance; the real show is what one sees
at home, not what transpires in the chilly studio.
I stopped by several times over the years. Once I got to watch Johnny do
his monologue from the wings. Yes, dammit, it was a thrill. President Reagan was
landing in a helicopter in the NBC parking lot and was scheduled to make a
televised address from the studio opposite Johnny's. There was talk he might
do a walk-on and surprise Johnny. But the unhappy surprise was that he didn't.
My last visit to "The Tonight Show" was in August. It was a Friday night,
and an unusual show. There were no movie or TV stars plugging projects on
Johnny's couch. Instead the producers had lined up an old-fashioned vaudeville
bill: jugglers, comics, acrobats.
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Even with the lights darkened over his desk during the performances center
stage, one could 52e Carson delighting in the entertainers. An extremely shapely
woman helping out in a magic act, and wearing a very tiny costume, inspired him
to get up from the desk and walk over for a closer view.
At every moment he seemed engaged, wired, almost electrified. When I got the
chance to shake hands with him backstage after the show, he was gracious and
cordial, but he seemed dimmed and depleted. When the spotlight is on him, a
light of his own shines back at it.
The Carson staff had been through emergencies of various kinds over the
years, but during this night's show something happened that they said had never
occurred before. A fairly well-known comedian came out and began his act,
screwed up his first two jokes, became disgusted with himself and marched off
the stage, disappearing through the back curtain.
Carson was only mildly alarmed and immediately began assuring the studio
audience that something like this could happen to any performer. "He just lost
his timing, that's all," he said, and through the studio public address system
he implored the comedian to come back out and try again.
Informed by feverish producers backstage that the comic was willing to
return, Carson primed the audience to be receptive. He reintroduced the comic,
who came out again, got the jokes right this time and got much bigger laughs
than were probably merited.
A potentially career-ending crisis had been averted. The videotape was edited
so that home viewers had no inkling of what had happened. The way Carson handled
this seemed to support the notion that to as great a degree as the carnivorous
world of show business will allow, he is a gentleman, a man to be admired as
well as enjoyed.
This, too, we will miss.
Although the tributes to Carson appear to make him uncomfortable, he probably
appreciates them. There were a few years scattered through his long run when he
was taken for granted, and periods when he seemed to be wearying of it all and
even growing stale. Yet he always sprang back. His rejuvenative powers were
rejuvenating to behold.
How do you thank somebody for a million laughs? The question has been asked
before. In this case, a million might actually be a low estimate. Tuning in NBC
Monday night at 11:30 is going to be a little like coming home to an empty
apartment after a loved one has just moved out.
In his last weeks, Carson has been looser, goofier and perhaps funnier than
ever. His monologues have become more balletic, his attitude more blithe. After
an irreverent joke he will say with caustic glee, "What can they do to me? I'm
outta here soon. He's lighter than air, he's younger than springtime, he's more
of a Johnny Carson than ever.
For all the money and fame, Carson was hounded by the "cold and aloof" label
almost from the beginning. A 1970 Life cover called him "the lonesome hero of
Middle America.' On Friday's show he joked, "Well, only four more
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The Washington Post, May 19, 1992
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emotion-filled days until all my staff members begin their books about me." It
was said that in his private life, he had a hard time experiencing happiness.
But in his public life, he did not.
And Johnny, you were no slouch at spreading it around, either.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, RIGHT, CARSON IN 1964, ONE YEAR INTO HIS "TONIGHT" REIGN. FROM
TOP, CARSON AS HIGH-POWERED PITCHMAN ART FERN, WITH CAROL WAYNE, IN 1977; WITH A
BABY GORILLA; AS AUNT BLABBY; AND THIS PAST FEBRUARY, WITH FIRST-TIME GUEST
ELIZABETH TAYLOR.
TYPE: BIOGRAPHY
SUBJECT: TELEVISION
ORGANIZATION: TONIGHT SHOW
NAMED-PERSONS: JOHNNY CARSON
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4TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
May 22, 1992
SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS; Section A; Page 1
LENGTH: 1389 words
HEADLINE: Theeeerre goes Johnny! Carson calling it quits tonight after 30
years He tucked us in with a good laugh
BYLINE: By Drew Jubera STAFF WRITER
KEYWORD: television; personalities; history; closings
BODY:
For more than half its nearly 30 years, "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny
Carson" has put the great American middle to bed, leading this loyal but
invisible audience through a world that looked very little like its own - one
populated with Hollywood celebrities, San Diego ZOO keepers, "hermetically
sealed envelopes kept in a mayonnaise jar," and Buddy Hackett.
But now it's over. Carson, 66, retires from "The Tonight Show" this
evening, to be replaced Monday by Jay Leno. His last appearance is expected to
be a ratings smash, but in this era of dozens of cable options it may not rival
even "The Tonight Show's" largest-ever audience, when it attracted an
estimated 49 million viewers in 1969 for the wedding of falsetto singer Tiny
Tim.
The show will be a kind of guestless home movie - no stars, no animal
trainers, only film clips of shared moments between Johnny, his two most
dependable cohorts (Ed McMahon, 69, and band leader Doc Severinsen, 64) and us,
the always-welcome viewing audience.
"The Tonight Show" was long the country's perfect, most-requested nightcap:
not too strong (Jack Paar), not too bitter (David Letterman), not too light
(Arsenio Hall). It was the spot on the cultural dial where fads arrived when
they'd survived to become trends. Where comics suffering from arrested
development turned into voices of middle-American cynicism (Don Rickles was
Carson's appointed head of the Populist Ugly American Party). Where sacred,
over-the-hill talent hung around to be venerated until it died.
And in the center, ringleading, was Carson. Carson, whose opening monologues
were an antidote and consensus of the day's somber and bizarre events. Carson,
whose guest lists were the arbiter of what was funny and who was interesting or
acceptably weird.
Nearly every successful comedian since the mid-'60s - from Rickles to Steve
Martin to Letterman to Jerry Seinfeld - owes a debt to Carson for giving him
exposure on "The Tonight Show. II To "do Carson" meant 12-17 million viewers
with an impact no other show has had for so long. Roseanne Arnold says her
appearance rerouted her life. "I was on one time, and by the next day my whole
life had changed. I moved my way out of poverty."
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1992 The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, May 22, 1992
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Carson's own impact and longevity owed as much to him tracking his audience
as to his audience tracking him.
"He may be the last person who addressed the middle class everyone is looking
for," says comic writer Roy Blount Jr., who appeared on "The Tonight Show"
more than a dozen times. "To me, being on the show always seemed like running
for president - trying to talk to America as a whole.
"When he came out against LBJ or the war [in his monologues], it meant there
was a consensus," Blount adds. "On the show, something always gave me the
feeling I was addressing not a liberal or conservative audience, but an audience
that responded to something deeper."
That audience has been vast and lucrative. Surviving the ratings grabs of at
least 15 late-night competitors (Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Joan Rivers - all
whacked), The Tonight Show's" low overhead and high revenues (it carries more
commercial minutes than prime-time shows) have made it the most profitable
series in TV history. And despite two previous long-term hosts (Steve Allen for
two years and Paar for five), the show's success is now inseparable from Carson.
He has outlasted all the video monuments of the last four decades, including
"Bonanza," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Mary Tyler Moore," "M*A*S*H," Walter
Cronkite and "Cosby." His reach was once so long that, joking in 1973 about a
toilet paper shortage, he spurred a consumer run on the stuff.
"Who in ancient Greece ever spoke to a nation as much or as thoroughly as
Johnny Carson?" asks David Marc, author of several books about TV, including
"Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture."
"For 20 years, prime time was bracketed by two daily commentaries on the
news," he adds. "One was Cronkite. The other was Carson."
When Carson began, nobody knew he would become what he became. His
11 Tonight Show" debuted Oct. 1, 1962. Introduced by McMahon, who would become
America's favorite laugh track, Carson stepped before a dubious viewership as
the hep-cat hayseed he was. A nation yawned.
"America can now go back to bed," Robert F. Kennedy told Paar, Carson's
edgier predecessor, on his last show.
"After that first night, the pages went down to the NBC coffee shop and all
of them were convinced Johnny wouldn't make it," recalls Kenneth Work, a
former NBC page and now a semi-retired history instructor at Georgia State
University. "After working with Paar all those years, we were concerned he
didn't have the excitement and outspokenness that Paar had."
Marc adds, "I didn't think he'd last six months."
NBC affiliates were slow to respond. The show first ran 105 minutes, with
Carson's monologue airing from 11:15-11:30 p.m. But many stations carried their
local news instead. In 1965, Carson refused to do the monologue in that time
slot, leaving Ed McMahon and band leader Skitch Henderson to entertain the
masses. Two years later, the first 15 minutes were canned.
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By then, Carson ruled (his monologue tiff would be the first of his many
shows of strength, including a 1978 demand to cut his workload from four nights
a week to three - at triple the salary).
With what writer Gore Vidal calls the perfect combination of "Midwestern
humor, New York smarts and Hollywood ambition,' Carson led the post-war
generation through the go-go '60s. This was before Letterman ushered in the Age
of Irony, when instead of wry smirks, TV could prompt nation-sized belly laughs.
The country seemed on constant "Carson watch," waiting up to see something that
would make everyone fall on the floor (Ed Ames's 1964 tomahawk toss into the
crotch of a cardboard dummy goosed a studio-audience laugh that lasted almost
four minutes, considered a TV record).
Co-opting Jack Benny's timing while updating Bob Hope's topicality, Carson's
monologues also let the country know it was safe to laugh when things were going
to hell
"Will Rogers saw us through the Depression, Hope got us through World War II
and Korea, and Carson may have done the same thing through the ' 60s and
Watergate and even the Gulf War," says Alex McNeil, author of "Total
Television," a programming guide from 1948 to the present. "The average viewer
thinks [Carson's] politics are the same as his or hers; I bet even George Bush
feels the same way. It's a remarkable talent to have that impression with
people."
The lame-duck Carson is still the late-night ratings leader in an
increasingly cluttered field. Yet he's been waning for years, the deft but
flawed golf swing that still concludes his monologues now more curio than smooth
move. His ratings are the lowest in the show's history, and his share of the
nightly audience has dropped 47 percent since 1978, farther than the decline for
all network viewing in prime time - due not only to viewers' growing appetite
for cable, but a dwindling demographic as well.
But the beauty of longevity is that it becomes the only thing that matters.
Even if one no longer watches Carson, one is never unaware of him. And on TV,
that is achievement enough.
"It seems important simply because it's on television," says Steve Allen, the
first " Tonight Show" host, beginning for 28 months in 1954. "Put a dead
rabbit, anything, a cucumber on TV for a week and it will seem glamorous,
evocative, especially if a studio audience hoots a welcome that would be
reasonable only for the second coming of Christ.
"But [Carson] provides the function comedy was created or evolved to supply,"
he adds from his Los Angeles office. "It provides a release. If we really
concentrated on the human predicament, we would spend the rest of our lives on
our knees weeping. [Carson] helps the nation relax. We may still care
passionately, but for at least a few minutes WE get a reprieve.'
Carson's trick might be the toughest trick of all. With his renowned cool,
his well-guarded private life (though he joked often about his four marriages,
knowing we all knew), and his populist knack, Carson was a kind of nightly
self-portrait of each person watching. He was less himself, than whoever we
wanted him to be.
LEXIS·NEXIS®
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PAGE
8
1992 The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, May 22, 1992
FOCUS
And for 30 years, we've just wanted him to be.
GRAPHIC: color photo: Johnny Carson photo: In addition to an opening monologue
that tweaked politicians and modern life, TV talk show host Johnny Carson was
known for creating outlandish characters for comic sketches. / The Associated
Press photo: Johnny Carson arrives at work Thursday in Burbank, Calif., for
the taping of his next-to-last # Tonight Show. It / The Associated Press color
illustration: editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich salutes Johnny Carson on his
last show.
TM
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PAGE
2
2ND STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
May 24, 1992, Sunday, CITY EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 19; ZONE: C
LENGTH: 799 words
HEADLINE: Carson becomes part of the memories
BYLINE: By Deborah Seibel and Michael A. Ley
BODY:
It couldn't be the last time he walked through those multicolored curtains.
It just couldn't. And yet, here was Johnny Carson, trying to make it intact
through yet another standing ovation. Trying to contain 30 years of memories
behind that elfin, smiling face for one more hour.
But not all of the evening's drama and emotion was taking place Friday
afternoon in NBC's Burbank, Calif., television studio, where the show was
filmed. In living rooms - and bedrooms, of course - all over the nation Friday
night, millions were tuning in to watch and say goodbye to the King of Late
Night television.
"It's kind of sad," said Carol Henson of Chicago as she watched the show from
her living room. "So much a part of your life and you take it for granted. Life
will go on, but next Friday night won't be the same."
Perhaps it made it easier Friday for Carson to have friends and family in the
audience. But there were also about 100 people who hadn't made the cut to see
the show Thursday night and were invited to fill in the few remaining seats. One
woman, standing outside by the specially-laid red carpets leading up to NBC's
colorful peacock-festooned Burbank doorway, said it would be one of the greatest
nights of her life.
"Can you imagine," she said, "I get to be here on the night Johnny Carson
says goodbye."
He chose a stool for part of his final performance - the only prop a great
entertainer ever needs. He seemed curiously relaxed, as though all the
heart-wrenching emotion of the night before - when Bette Midler sang to him -
had freed him to enjoy his last moments under the Studio 1 spotlights.
This was the last time we would see Doc Severinsen blast through the
If Tonight Show's" opening theme song. The last time we would hear Ed McMahon
call, "Heeere's Johnny! If But on this, the last night of the "The Tonight
Show Starring Johnny Carson," there would be no golf swing. He tricked us.
The trick for the rest of us will be getting along without him before we turn
out the lights.
"There's this emptiness inside," "Tonight" saxophonist Tom Peterson said
quietly, as he walked away fom the studio for the final time.
TM
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PAGE
3
Chicago Tribune, May 24, 1992
FOCUS
Reflectiveness was understandable but not uniform. In Chicago, the Excalibur
nightclub threw what it claimed was the "world's largest goodbye party," with
"The Tonight Show" screened on the club's many television sets, a trivia
contest and a clever offer made: Anyone with the name Johnny or Carson or who
could prove they'd been divorced three times got in free.
Yvonne Pelachyk, 43, and her daughter Kim, 22, visiting from Utica, Mich.,
went to the club to pay their respects.
"He was like an escape," Yvonne Pelachyk said. "He was funny. Watching the
show was a no-brainer."
On the North Side, Carol Hanson, 46, positioned herself on the living room
couch while her husband, Terry, 47, pulled his chair up close to the television
to watch the show like they always do. This being a weekend night, the couple
sent out for their regular late Friday night pizza and grouped their five
children around to watch.
If Carson's last show was filled with nostalgia - snippets of interviews
with now-departed stars like Groucho Marx and Lucille Ball and the orchestra
playing "I'll Be Seeing You," Carson's favorite song - it was no different for
the Hansons.
They have been Carson fans for their entire married life and they couldn't
help but reminisce about how when they first were watching they lived in a
small, basement apartment.
If that recollection didn't make them feel old, their daughter Jennifer's
question surely did.
"Who's Jack Paar?" the 20-year-old college student asked at one point.
Terry Hanson, who not only answered but remembered watching when Paar was
"The Tonight Show" host, recognized quickly that he needed to translate parts
of the show if he wanted his Arsenio Hall generation offspring to stay tuned in.
In the Hanson household, the entire show went over well. They laughed at the
jokes, sang along to Garth Brooks and Carol Hanson oohed at Liberace. Everyone
was impressed with a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the show is put together,
from a writer's meeting to footage of Carson preparing to walk on stage.
"God, I get butterflies just watching him go out there," Carol Hanson said.
"See him take a deep breath before he goes on?"
Carson ended the show with a simple farewell.
"You people watching - I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a
privilege,' he said. "I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight."
But Terry Hanson, like millions of Americans, had the final word.
"Shall I turn it off?" he asked as the credits rolled.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
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HARRY SHLAUDEMAN
Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman is one of America's most decorated
and skillful foreign service officers. In his decades of foreign
service from Europe to Latin America, he has faced adverse
circumstances, crises, and war with bravery and tact. His
conviction was demonstrated in 1990, when at the request of the
President, he came out of retirement to serve as Ambassador to
Nicaragua to ensure its peaceful transition to democracy. For
decades of meritorious service, courageous diplomacy, and
protection of America's interests abroad, the United States
honors Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman.
S/S 9203985
United States Departme it of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
March 9, 1992
Ed.W. FUV
MEMORANDUM FOR BRENT SCOWCROFT
THE WHITE HOUSE
Subject: Secretary of State Recommends Presidential Medal of
Freedom for Ambassador Shlaudeman
The Secretary recommends to the President that Ambassador
Harry Shlaudeman receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ambassador Shlaudeman will be returning to retirement following
service as the President's envoy to Nicaragua.
President Bush asked Ambassador Shlaudeman to come out of
retirement to take on the difficult task of Ambassador to
post-Sandinista Nicaragua. It would be a personal expression
of the President's appreciation of Ambassador Shlaudeman's
service to his country, as well as the Nation's testimony to an
extraordinary diplomatic career.
You will note that the Secretary's letter distills the
highlights of Ambassador Shlaudeman's career. The letter also
attaches a comprehensive expanded career chronology. The two
documents are designed to demonstrate that Ambassador
Shlaudeman "has made an especially meritorious contribution to
the national interests of the United States," which is required
to receive the Medal.
There is ample precedent for outstanding diplomats to
receive the Medal. W. Averell Harriman, Ellsworth Bunker and
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick have received this award.
According to the Deputy Director of the White House Office
of Correspondence, it is a requirement of the selection process
that a letter of recommendation to the President be submitted.
Consequently, the Secretary has signed the abovementioned
letter, instead of a memorandum to the President.
Stephen
W. Robert Pearson
Executive Secretary
Attachments:
Letter of Recommendation
Career Highlights
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
THE WHITE HOUSE
washington
11/20
Drw,
as premised plas
find attached the
relaand material
on and Shlanderon
Hope this is helpful,
Phil.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE
WASHINGTON
March 9, 1992
Dear Mr. President:
I heartily recommend that our outgoing Ambassador to Nicaragua,
Harry W. Shlaudeman, be selected to receive The Presidential
Medal of Freedom. Throughout his outstanding career in the
Foreign Service, and particularly his most recent service in
Nicaragua, Ambassador Shlaudeman has, as stated in the
applicable Executive Orders, "made an especially meritorious
contribution to the security and national interests of the
United States."
Ambassador Shlaudeman came out of retirement at your personal
request to serve as your envoy to Nicaragua and to the newly
elected Chamorro Administration. He has helped that government
in its efforts to achieve national reconciliation, in spite of
the Sandinistas' VOW to "rule from below."
Ambassador Shlaudeman was the "hero and mainstay" of our
Contadora efforts; Ambassador to Argentina during the Falkland
War; Deputy Chief of Mission in Chile during the Allende
regime; Chief Political Officer during the Dominican coup; at
the side of the Secretary of State during the invasion of
Czechoslovakia. His has been a singular performance.
I suggest to you, Mr. President, that Ambassador Harry
Shlaudeman justly deserves to join the select company of other
recipients of the Medal who have come from the ranks of
American diplomats.
Should your decision be favorable, I would also recommend the
Medal be presented to Ambassador Shlaudeman shortly after his
departure from Nicaragua.
Sincerely,
James Jim A. Baker, III
Enclosure: Career Highlights
The President,
The White House.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
HIGHLIGHTS OF AMBASSADOR
SHLAUDEMAN'S
FOREIGN SERVICE CAREER
May 1990 - Present
At President Bush's request, Ambassador
Shlaudeman comes out of retirement to
be envoy to Nicaragua, serving at a
time of extraordinary change from a
totalitarian regime to President
Chamorro's democratic rule. It is a
period fraught with pitfalls, for the
Sandinista opposition has vowed to
"rule from below." Ambassador
Shlaudeman faces strikes as well as
rural and urban violence. His guidance
helps stabilize an economy in free fall
and starts it on the road to recovery.
He wins the respect of Nicaraguans
across the political spectrum and
successfully implements the policies
and programs of the Bush Administration.
August 1986-
As Ambassador to Brazil, Shlaudeman
January 1989
breaks a 5-year impasse by concluding a
long sought-after civil air agreement.
He convinces the Brazilians to ease
other restrictions on trade and
investment. He confronts Brazil's
stubborness on the issue of nuclear
non-proliferation. For his
performance, he receives the
Presidential Distinguished Service
Award.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
-2-
March 1984 - July 1986 As Ambassador at Large, Shlaudeman is
called by the Secretary of State, "the
hero and mainstay of our diplomatic
effort" during the forging of the
Contadora peace process in Central
America. He keeps the door open for a
negotiated settlement without
sacrificing any important elements of
the Administration's policy. In one
year, he makes 28 trips, logging
180,000 miles. Face-to-face exchanges
with the Central American and Contadora
Chiefs of State and Foreign Ministers
come to 148. During one period of
particularly intense activity, he meets
with 9 chiefs of state in 8 days.
September 1983 -
March 1984
Ambassador Shlaudeman serves as
Executive Director of the National
Bipartisan Commission on Central
America. At the conclusion of his
duties, President Reagan writes in
1984, "The report of the Commission has
made a landmark contribution to our
understanding of the problems in
Central America and is one of the most
important analyses of this country's
foreign policy that has been undertaken
in recent years
...
[it] is a tribute
to your dedication to the highest
standards of the Foreign Service."
October 1980 -
As Ambassador to Argentina during the
April 1983
Falkland War, Shlaudeman protects U.S.
core interests while fashioning the
elements of a future relationship with
Argentina. Assistant Secretary Thomas
Enders writes that Shlaudeman's
performance "represented a textbook
case of effective diplomacy in hostile
circumstances." For his
accomplishments, he receives the
Presidential Meritorious Service Award.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
-3-
June 1977 -
Shlaudeman is Ambassador to Peru. His
September 1980
influence is a significant element in the
Peruvian military's willingness to allow a
re-institution of democracy in July 1980.
June 1976 -
Shlaudeman serves as Assistant Secretary
March 1977
for Inter-American Affairs.
March 1975 -
Shlaudeman is Ambassador to Venezuela. He
May 1976
creates a constructive dialogue with the new
nationalist government. He implements a
wide range of technical co-operation
programs, and his performance is praised by
the Secretary of Agriculture.
June 1973 -
Shlaudeman serves as Deputy Assistant
March 1975
Secretary in the Bureau of Inter-American
Affairs. At the fall of Allende, his
skillful guidance and supervision allows the
U.S. to avoid the worst pitfalls in the
aftermath of the overthrow. He is
instrumental in forging a new policy towards
Cuba, which includes a hijacking treaty. He
plays a key role in resolving a dozen major
Latin American investment disputes.
June 1969 -
Shlaudeman is Deputy Chief of Mission in
June 1973
Santiago. He is there during the tenure of
the Marxist government of Allende. He is
credited with helping to establish a correct
relationship with the government under
adverse circumstances.
May 1967 -
As Special Assistant to the Secretary
January 1969
of State, Shlaudeman is confronted with the
Czech invasion, as well as the Paris accords
on Vietnam. Secretary Rusk considers him an
"extraordinary" officer.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
-4-
June 1965 - June 1966
Shlaudeman is Chief Assistant to OAS
Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and,
together with him, remains in Santo
Domingo during the Dominican crisis.
In 1966, President Johnson writes of
his "exceptional contribution to the
success of Ambassador Bunker's efforts
in the Dominican Republic." In October
1965 the White House's McGeorge Bundy
writes of Shlaudeman's "rare gift of
political understanding." That same
month, he is awarded one of the
Department's highest honors, the
Distinguished Honor Award for his
performance in Santo Domingo.
February 1964 -
Shlaudeman is Chief of Dominican
June 1965
Affairs. During this period civil war
breaks out. He is involved in the top
level of negotiations seeking a
solution to the crisis.
March 1962 -
Shlaudeman is Chief Political
February 1964
Officer in Santo Domingo. While there,
a military coup overthrows the
freely-elected government, a government
which he "had done so much to bring
into being."
January 1960 -
Shlaudeman is Second Secretary at
January 1962
our Legation in Sofia and its Political
Officer. With an excellent command of
Bulgarian, his performance is superior
in every respect
November 1956 -
As Political Officer in Bogota, he
May 1958
produces a great mass of political
reporting, including a report cited for
special mention on Fidel Castro, during
the latter's sojourn in Colombia at the
time of the 1948 Bogota riots.
March 1955 -
Vice Consul Shlaudeman serves at
November 1956
the Consulate in Barranquilla,
Colombia. In addition to visa work, he
reports on local economic activity with
accuracy and efficiency. His
performance is commended and he is
assigned to the Political Section of
the Embassy in Bogota.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
THE SECRETARY OF STATE
WASHINGTON
March 9, 1992
Dear Mr. President:
I heartily recommend that our outgoing Ambassador to Nicaragua,
Harry W. Shlaudeman, be selected to receive The Presidential
Medal of Freedom. Throughout his outstanding career in the
Foreign Service, and particularly his most recent service in
Nicaragua, Ambassador Shlaudeman has, as stated in the
applicable Executive Orders, "made an especially meritorious
contribution to the security and national interests of the
United States."
Ambassador Shlaudeman came out of retirement at your personal
request to serve as your envoy to Nicaragua and to the newly
elected Chamorro Administration. He has helped that government
in its efforts to achieve national reconciliation, in spite of
the Sandinistas' VOW to "rule from below."
Ambassador Shlaudeman was the "hero and mainstay" of our
Contadora efforts; Ambassador to Argentina during the Falkland
War; Deputy Chief of Mission in Chile during the Allende
regime; Chief Political Officer during the Dominican coup; at
the side of the Secretary of State during the invasion of
Czechoslovakia. His has been a singular performance.
I suggest to you, Mr. President, that Ambassador Harry
Shlaudeman justly deserves to join the select company of other
recipients of the Medal who have come from the ranks of
American diplomats.
Should your decision be favorable, I would also recommend the
Medal be presented to Ambassador Shlaudeman shortly after his
departure from Nicaragua.
Sincerely,
James June A. Baker, III
Enclosure: Career Highlights
The President,
The White House.
CONFIDENTIAL
CONF IDENTIAL
1812
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
April 29, 1992
02 APR 29 P4: 57
MEMORANDUM FOR PHILLIP D. BRADY
FROM:
BRENT SCOWCROFT
B
SUBJECT:
Presidential Citizens Medal for Ambassador Harry
Shlaudeman
Secretary Baker has written to the President recommending that
the President confer the Presidential Medal of Freedom on
Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman, a distinguished career diplomat. As
Secretary Baker points out, Ambassador Shlaudeman has had an
extraordinary career, serving in five Ambassadorial posts in
Latin America with distinction. Ambassador Shlaudeman is
retiring from the Foreign Service (for the second time) after
coming out of retirement in 1990 at the President's request to
serve for the last two years as Ambassador to Nicaragua.
I agree with Secretary Baker that Ambassador Shlaudeman is richly
deserving of Presidential recognition of his service. After my
office's informal consultations with your office, I recommend
that the President confer upon him the Presidential Citizens
Medal for his having "performed exemplary deeds of service" for
the country. In receiving this award, Ambassador Shlaudeman will
be in distinguished company. President Bush has conferred the
Medal on several in the diplomatic corps, including Deputy
Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, former Undersecretary of
State Robert Kimmitt, and Undersecretary of Defense (and former
Ambassador to Indonesia) Paul Wolfowitz.
Attachment
Tab A
Incoming Correspondence from State Department
DECLASSIFIED
CONFIDENTIAL
PER NSC WAIVER,
Declassify on: OADR
By It NARA, Date 06/12/23
CONFIDENTIAL
S/S 9203985
1812
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
March 9, 1992
MEMORANDUM FOR BRENT SCOWCROFT
THE WHITE HOUSE
Subject: Secretary of State Recommends Presidential Medal of
Freedom for Ambassador Shlaudeman
The Secretary recommends to the President that Ambassador
Harry Shlaudeman receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ambassador Shlaudeman will be returning to retirement following
service as the President's envoy to Nicaragua.
President Bush asked Ambassador Shlaudeman to come out of
retirement to take on the difficult task of Ambassador to
post-Sandinista Nicaragua. It would be a personal expression
of the President's appreciation of Ambassador Shlaudeman's
service to his country, as well as the Nation's testimony to an
extraordinary diplomatic career.
You will note that the Secretary's letter distills the
highlights of Ambassador Shlaudeman's career. The letter also
attaches a comprehensive expanded career chronology. The two
documents are designed to demonstrate that Ambassador
Shlaudeman "has made an especially meritorious contribution to
the national interests of the United States," which is required
to receive the Medal.
There is ample precedent for outstanding diplomats to
receive the Medal. W. Averell Harriman, Ellsworth Bunker and
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick have received this award.
According to the Deputy Director of the White House Office
of Correspondence, it is a requirement of the selection process
that a letter of recommendation to the President be submitted.
Consequently, the Secretary has signed the abovementioned
letter, instead of a memorandum to the President.
Stephen 1.
W. Robert Pearson
Executive Secretary
Attachments:
Letter of Recommendation
Career Highlights
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
HIGHLIGHTS OF AMBASSADOR
SHLAUDEMAN'S
FOREIGN SERVICE CAREER
May 1990 - Present
At President Bush's request, Ambassador
Shlaudeman comes out of retirement to
be envoy to Nicaragua, serving at a
time of extraordinary change from a
totalitarian regime to President
Chamorro's democratic rule. It is a
period fraught with pitfalls, for the
Sandinista opposition has vowed to
"rule from below." Ambassador
Shlaudeman faces strikes as well as
rural and urban violence. His guidance
helps stabilize an economy in free fall
and starts it on the road to recovery.
He wins the respect of Nicaraguans
across the political spectrum and
successfully implements the policies
and programs of the Bush Administration.
August 1986-
As Ambassador to Brazil, Shlaudeman
January 1989
breaks a 5-year impasse by concluding a
long sought-after civil air agreement.
He convinces the Brazilians to ease
other restrictions on trade and
investment. He confronts Brazil's
stubborness on the issue of nuclear
non-proliferation. For his
performance, he receives the
Presidential Distinguished Service
Award.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
-2-
March 1984 - July 1986 As Ambassador at Large, Shlaudeman is
called by the Secretary of State, "the
hero and mainstay of our diplomatic
effort" during the forging of the
Contadora peace process in Central
America. He keeps the door open for a
negotiated settlement without
sacrificing any important elements of
the Administration's policy. In one
year, he makes 28 trips, logging
180,000 miles. Face-to-face exchanges
with the Central American and Contadora
Chiefs of State and Foreign Ministers
come to 148. During one period of
particularly intense activity, he meets
with 9 chiefs of state in 8 days.
September 1983 -
March 1984
Ambassador Shlaudeman serves as
Executive Director of the National
Bipartisan Commission on Central
America. At the conclusion of his
duties, President Reagan writes in
1984, "The report of the Commission has
made a landmark contribution to our
understanding of the problems in
Central America and is one of the most
important analyses of this country's
foreign policy that has been undertaken
in recent years
[it] is a tribute
to your dedication to the highest
standards of the Foreign Service."
October 1980 -
As Ambassador to Argentina during the
April 1983
Falkland War, Shlaudeman protects U.S.
core interests while fashioning the
elements of a future relationship with
Argentina. Assistant Secretary Thomas
Enders writes that Shlaudeman's
performance "represented a textbook
case of effective diplomacy in hostile
circumstances." For his
accomplishments, he receives the
Presidential Meritorious Service Award.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
-3-
June 1977 -
Shlaudeman is Ambassador to Peru. His
September 1980
influence is a significant element in the
Peruvian military's willingness to allow a
re-institution of democracy in July 1980.
June 1976 -
Shlaudeman serves as Assistant Secretary
March 1977
for Inter-American Affairs.
March 1975 -
Shlaudeman is Ambassador to Venezuela. He
May 1976
creates a constructive dialogue with the new
nationalist government. He implements a
wide range of technical co-operation
programs, and his performance is praised by
the Secretary of Agriculture.
June 1973 -
Shlaudeman serves as Deputy Assistant
March 1975
Secretary in the Bureau of Inter-American
Affairs. At the fall of Allende, his
skillful guidance and supervision allows the
U.S. to avoid the worst pitfalls in the
aftermath of the overthrow. He is
instrumental in forging a new policy towards
Cuba, which includes a hijacking treaty. He
plays a key role in resolving a dozen major
Latin American investment disputes.
June 1969 -
Shlaudeman is Deputy Chief of Mission in
June 1973
Santiago. He is there during the tenure of
the Marxist government of Allende. He is
credited with helping to establish a correct
relationship with the government under
adverse circumstances.
May 1967 -
As Special Assistant to the Secretary
January 1969
of State, Shlaudeman is confronted with the
Czech invasion, as well as the Paris accords
on Vietnam. Secretary Rusk considers him an
"extraordinary" officer.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
-4-
June 1965 - June 1966
Shlaudeman is Chief Assistant to OAS
Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and,
together with him, remains in Santo
Domingo during the Dominican crisis.
In 1966, President Johnson writes of
his "exceptional contribution to the
success of Ambassador Bunker's efforts
in the Dominican Republic." In October
1965 the White House's McGeorge Bundy
writes of Shlaudeman's "rare gift of
political understanding. That same
month, he is awarded one of the
Department's highest honors, the
Distinguished Honor Award for his
performance in Santo Domingo.
February 1964 -
Shlaudeman is Chief of Dominican
June 1965
Affairs. During this period civil war
breaks out. He is involved in the top
level of negotiations seeking a
solution to the crisis.
March 1962 -
Shlaudeman is Chief Political
February 1964
Officer in Santo Domingo. While there,
a military coup overthrows the
freely-elected government, a government
which he "had done so much to bring
into being."
January 1960 -
Shlaudeman is Second Secretary at
January 1962
our Legation in Sofia and its Political
Officer. With an excellent command of
Bulgarian, his performance is superior
in every respect
November 1956 -
As Political Officer in Bogota, he
May 1958
produces a great mass of political
reporting, including a report cited for
special mention on Fidel Castro, during
the latter's sojourn in Colombia at the
time of the 1948 Bogota riots.
March 1955 -
Vice Consul Shlaudeman serves at
November 1956
the Consulate in Barranquilla,
Colombia. In addition to visa work, he
reports on local economic activity with
accuracy and efficiency. His
performance is commended and he is
assigned to the Political Section of
the Embassy in Bogota.
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE
Who's Who in America, 1938-89
PETTY, RICHARD, auto racer. S. Lee and Elizabeth T. P.; m. Lynda
Owens; children: Kyle, Sharon, Lisa, Rebecca. Auto racer 30 years. Mem.
Pres.'s Council Fitness and Sport. Named Grand Nat. Rookie of Year,
1959; Most Popular Driver in Grand Nat., 1962, 64, 68, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77,
78; Martini & Rossi Am. Driver of Year. 1971; Driver of Year Nat. Motor-
sport Press Assn., 1974-75; inducted into N.C. Athletic Hall of Fame, 1973.
Mem. Nat. Assn. Stock Car Auto Racing (7 time champion; Winston Cup
grand nat. champion 1964, 67, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79). Entered 1015 Grand Nat.
Races, winner 200, 1958-86, with 55 Superspeedway wins; winner Daytona
500, 1964, 66, 71, 73, 74, 79, 81. Address: Rt 4 Box 86 Randleman NC
27317
PAGE
1
The New York Times, November 16, 1992
They were salvaging the car because Petty decided to get it back onto the
track for the race's final lap to salute his fans. He did so, and the finish
symbolized the way Petty's career -- the greatest in the sport -- had come
crawling to an end.
Team's Fortunes Depressed
Petty won 200 races, 95 more than anyone else. He also has seven
championships and seven Daytona 500 victories, both records.
But his last victory was July 4, 1984. Now he retires as a driver to
concentrate solely on car-owner duties. And he'll have to; his team has slipped
badly in the last decade.
Before the race, Petty's wife, Lynda, said she was relieved to see her
husband stop racing, leaving their son, Kyle, as the family's only racer. "I
think half the burden of concern can be put to rest," she said. "I still have a
son out there."
For Petty, his family's sense of relief -- especially vivid right after his
crash -- has helped make his retirement easier to accept.
The New York Times, November 16, 1992
"My three daughters came in," he said. "They were all crying. Lynda was
crying, too. It really took a load off me because I saw how it really lifted a
load from them."
Until today, Petty had been the last Nascar champion to win the driving
title while owning his own team, doing so in 1979.
But Kulwicki, a 37-year-old driver who grew up in Greenfield, Wis., changed
that. He steadfastly refused offers to drive for other teams -- including two
offers from Bill Elliott's car owner, Junior Johnson -- preferring instead to
develop his own team.
Kulwicki's stubbornness was
GRAPHIC: Photo: Richard Petty's Pontiac burning after being involved in a
collision yesterday in his final Nascar race at the Hooters 500 at Atlanta Motor
Speedway in Hampton, Ga. Petty escaped from the crash unhurt. (Associated Press)
NAME: SIANO, JOSEPH; PETTY, RICHARD
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11TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 15, 1992
SECTION: SPORTS; Section F; Page 9
LENGTH: 474 words
HEADLINE: ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION SPECIAL REPORT RICHARD'S LAST RIDE: THE
RACES HE HAS WON REMEMBERING RICHARD 'King Kong' under hood fueled first
big-track win Recalling an engine switch that helped propelled Petty's career.
BYLINE: By Bill Robinson STAFF WRITER
KEYWORD: automotive; racing; personalities; retirement; competition; history;
awards; records; results
BODY:
It all began in the fall of 1963. Richard Petty, young, handsome and the
son of three-time NASCAR national champion Lee Petty, was just another racer.
Earlier in the year, at the Atlanta 500, he had brought his underpowered little
blue racer, the Plymouth, and drove to a sixth- place finish. This was high
living indeed, considering he was running against the powerful Fords of Fireball
Roberts and Fastback Freddie Lorenzen, among others.
"One of these days I'm gonna get me some power [a stronger engine] and see if
I can win one of these big track races," he said, smiling and sitting on the old
guard rail along pit road at Atlanta International Raceway.
Petty's factory ride sponsor was Chrysler. Someone at Chrysler remembered
some moth-balled engines from the 1950s, 426-cubic-inch King Kong hemi-head
engines intended, said a Chrysler executive, "for our big Chryslers, the kind
doctors' wives drive
but the engine was 50 big that it would overheat
while the doctor's wife waited for a red light to turn green."
In the quest to match Ford and GM, someone at Chrysler remembered the King
Kong hemi-head. At a Texas test track in October 1963, NASCAR writers were
concerned with a staggered-valve Chevy engine Junior Johnson was supposedly
testing amid great secrecy.
"Don't worry 'bout me," Junior said. "You need to check out 01' Blue.
Richard Petty a'went by me gut there today like I was a'changin' tars. "
"The first time I cranked it [King Kong hemi-headl," Richard said, "I thought
it was gonna suck the hood into the engine."
This writer began calling him "King Richard the Hemi-hearted, a corny but
accurate application. The younger Petty had yet to win a big race on a big
track, though he had won 14 short-track races in 1963 (of 63 NASCAR races that
season).
Then it was on to Daytona. And February 1964. Richard won that Daytona 500 -
his first of an unmatched seven Daytona 500s - by leading 184 of the 200 laps,
still the most lopsided achievement in big-track history in American racing.
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A month later, March of '64, Richard Petty came to the Atlanta 500 and was
badly beaten, finishing back in the pack as Lorenzen won his third straight 500
in Atlanta. The King Kong engine had nowhere near the torque of the Ford engine,
and had trouble gaining power off the sharp, short corners in Atlanta. An angry
Richard departed Atlanta saying, "The Pettys ain't through, though, till they
take us out toes-up in a pine box."
The short burst of anger was wasted; Richard was to win many, many more
races, with the hemi-head and without it.
Fireball Roberts, victim of a Flaming crash in late May at Charlotte, died on
July 2, Richard Petty's 25th birthday. Fireball, the man who had made NASCAR a
national household word, was 35. The new king, indeed, was now Richard Petty.
And he has served us well.
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13TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 15, 1992
SECTION: SPORTS; Section F; Page 2
LENGTH: 702 words
HEADLINE: THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION SPECIAL REPORT RICHARD'S LAST RIDE:
A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO FANS
KEYWORD: automotive; racing; personalities; retirement; chronologies; history;
families
BODY:
Richard Petty became "The King" of stock cars by winning more races and
signing more autographs than anyone else. Today at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he
bids his fans farewell in his final starts
Tale through time: Richard Petty
A chronology of events that marked Richard Petty's journey into racing
history.
1949 - Lee Petty begins his family's NASCAR racing saga on a 3/4- mile dirt
track in Charlotte, where he finished upside down after a multi- car accident in
a new Buick Roadmaster.
1954 - Lee Petty wins the first of his three NASCAR championships, driving a
Chrysler.
1956 - Upon graduation from high school, part-time crew member Richard
Petty goes to work full-time for Petty Engineering building engines.
1959 - Richard Petty takes the checkered flag for the first time at the
Lakewood Speedway dirt track in Atlanta driving an Oldsmobile. But his father
protests the scoring on a day so dusty the Atlanta fire department had to water
the track. An hour after the race, Lee Petty is declared the winner. The Pettys
take home $ 3,700.
1961 - Richard and engine-building brother Maurice become decision makers
with their father in Petty Engineering after a terrible crash at Daytona nearly
kills Lee and ends his driving career.
1964 - Richard Petty scores his first superspeedway win in the Daytona 500
and his first NASCAR championship.
1965 - Chrysler withdraws from NASCAR racing in protest of the banning of its
engines with hemispherical combustion chambers. The Pettys take up drag racing,
but a mechanical failure sends Richard's car into the crowd at the Dallas, Ga.,
track, killing a young boy.
1967 - One year after Lee turns over the day-to-day operation of Petty
Engineering to his sons, Richard records his greatest season - 10 straight
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1992 The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, November 15, 1992
wins, 27 victories in 48 races and his second NASCAR championship.
1969 - Petty Engineering switches to Petty Enterprises to create stock for
Richard and Maurice. The Pettys switch to Ford for one season.
1971 - Petty becomes the first NASCAR driver to top $ 1 million in career
earnings.
1972 - STP joins Petty to begin motorsports' longest-running sponsorship
after long negotiations about how his Plymouth is going to be painted. Petty
wins his first race with a new paint scheme on Jan. 23 at Riverside, Calif. -
Petty blue on the top half and STP red on the bottom.
1976 - The year of "The Crash." David Pearson and Petty collide exiting the
final corner of the Daytona 500. Pearson's Mercury bounces off another car and
chugs slowly across the finish line while Petty's Dodge comes to a halt in the
grass and stalls just shy of the finish.
1978 - Driving a Dodge Magnum, Petty suffers his first winless season in 18
years. Petty switches to Chevrolet midway in the year, leaving Chrysler after a
total of 18 seasons.
1979 - Petty's only son, Kyle, at age 18 wins the first race he's ever
entered - an ARCA event at Daytona - driving a Dodge Magnum, briefly spawning
talk of Richard's retirement. Richard wins his sixth Daytona 500 and his seventh
season points championship by overtaking Darrell Waltrip in the final race at
Ontario, Calif. In that season, he wins his 127th and final pole.
1981 - Petty wins his seventh Daytona 500 with smart pit strategy by longtime
crew chief and cousin Dale Inman, who leaves Petty Enterprises for a
better-paying job with another team shortly afterward.
1983 - Petty's car is discovered to have an illegal, oversize engine after
winning at Charlotte. It was installed by brother Maurice, who later said he was
protesting lax inspection policies by NASCAR and rampant cheating on engines by
other teams.
1984 - Petty switches to a Pontiac team owned by Mike Curb for the next two
seasons - the only departure from his family team. Before President Ronald
Reagan on July 4, he narrowly beats Cale Yarborough at Daytona to win his 200th
race, using, he said, the same move he made on Pearson in 1976 except for
allowing Yarborough more room.
1989 - Petty's incredible streak of 513 consecutive starts in NASCAR's
Winston Cup ends at Richmond, Va.
1991 - Petty announces his Fan Appreciation Tour and decision to retire from
driving after the season to work full-time as a car owner.
GRAPHIC: Photo: mug of Lee Petty in 1949 Photo: Richard abd engine-building
brother Maurice (far left) with their father in 1961 Photo: The Petty's outlawed
race car after NASCAR banned Chrysler's hemospherical combustion chambers Photo:
Race car driver Richard Petty in 1967, his best season Photo: Richard Petty
with racing trophy in 1971 Photo: Petty's Dodge Charger Photo: Richard Petty
with his dad (left) and son Kyle (right) in 1979 Photo: mug of Richard Petty
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24TH STORY of Level 1. printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
November 15, 1992, Sunday, 2 STAR Edition
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1539 words
HEADLINE: For Richard Petty, it's been a long, fun ride
BYLINE: SHAV GLICK; Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: HAMPTON, Ga.
BODY:
HAMPTON, Ga. -- Stock car racing fans have long thought of
Richard Petty as bigger than life. And now, in front of the Atlanta
Motor Speedway, he really is.
A 7-foot 2-inch statue of ""the King'' - even his son Kyle
refers to him as the King -- was unveiled Friday as part of the
final round of a seasonlong fan-appreciation tour that has been as
exhausting as a presidential campaign. The statue is not of Petty
in his familiar blue and red No. 43 race car, but, more
appropriately, of Petty signing an autograph for a young fan.
Other athletes, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving,
Carl Yastrzemski and Bill Shoemaker, made triumphal tours in the
final years of their careers, but their appearances were largely
limited to game-day activities.
Petty's has been different. The race -- today's Hooters 500
is his 29th this season and the 1, 185th and last of his career --
has been the easy part of his schedule.
"Wouldn't it be something if I won my last race? 11 the King
mused, patiently leaning against a stack of tires in the garage
area, signing autographs while waiting to qualify his Pontiac for
the last time. ""It'd be one of those Hollywood script deals, but
if all those other cats in the race fell over and let me win, I'd
take it.
Even Petty knows it's not going to happen. He hasn't won a
race in eight years, not since the Firecracker 400 on July 4, 1984,
when he won at Daytona Beach, Fla., with President Reagan looking
on. That was 212 races ago.
He has not even been a contender these days. His highest
finish in 28 races this season was 15th.
It's not so much that he is too old, at 55, or that his crew
chief-cousin-best friend, Dale Inman, doesn't have the car ready to
run up front; it's that he is so exhausted from nearly 10 months of
daily appearances, signing sessions, talk shows, interviews,
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fan-club meetings and corporate outings that when he climbs into
his car, he is not ready for nearly four hours of 200-mph racing on
a high-banked superspeedway.
For instance, the unveiling of the 500-pound bronze statue in
the Petty Garden occurred only 45 minutes before he was to qualify
his Pontiac for the last time.
""I can't believe how good we feel about the fuss you all are
making over us,'' he said, acknowledging the cheers that followed
his every step as fans first caught sight of the trademark cowboy
hat and wraparound dark glasses. ""Usually, you don't get a statue
dedicated to you until they've got you laid out and your toes
turned up.
Petty qualified 36th at 175.318 mph, more than 5 mph slower
than surprise pole-sitter Rick Mast, who ran a track-record 180.183
in an Oldsmobile.
Saturday night, when even the playboys among the drivers head
home early, Petty was at the Georgia Dome, being entertained by the
country singing group, Alabama, in a three-hour special called
Alabama Salutes Richard Petty.
This is as much a celebration for my fans as it is for
me, Petty said before the concert.
The only thing better might be if the group were called North
Carolina.
It has been this way all season.
Take the Pepsi 400 last July at Daytona, where Petty had his
last hurrah on the track he calls his favorite. Petty was
second-fastest qualifier and jumped into the lead when the green
flag dropped. The huge crowd exploded when they saw No. 43 out in
front, just like the old days.
But the euphoria lasted only five laps before he began to
slide back through the field. And midway through the race, he
pulled into pit lane and asked for a relief driver.
""I got pumped up when the race started and I was out in
front, he said. ""It was like I was 20 years younger. I was
having a big old time, but after a couple of hours I was plain old
tuckered out.
Consider why. The Friday night before the race, Petty's
friends and family gave him a gigantic birthday party that lasted
into the wee hours. The next morning he was there for the
dedication of Richard Petty Boulevard, an artery leading from the
airport to Daytona International Speedway.
And on the morning of the race, right up until it was time to
take the green flag, Petty shared the center of attention with
President Bush. Instead of resting back in the garages in the shade
with the other drivers, Petty stood in 90-degree heat, shaking
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hands, accepting gifts and making small talk.
""I don't believe it,'' driver Darrell Waltrip said. ""I
don't see how anyone can be that patient when he's about ready to
go racing. I've been around him for 21 years and he never stops
amazing me.
A week later, Petty was back home in Level Cross, N.C., where
Petty Enterprises held its annual open house -- a weekend of fan
worship at the Petty shrine. More than 65,000 fans visited the
family complex, the traditional event helping fill the motels in
neighboring High Point, Asheboro, Greensboro and Winston-Salem. The
log book showed they came from nearly every state in the union.
Which brings to mind what Petty said he does for training, or
for relaxing between races: ""Nothing. I just sit around, drink a
lot of Cokes, climb in the race car and go.
Between ""sitting around, Petty filled the NASCAR record
book with accomplishments not likely to be matched. His 200
victories are more than the combined total by the top nine drivers
this year -- Davey Allison, Alan Kulwicki, Bill Elliott, Harry
Gant, son Kyle, Mark Martin, Ricky Rudd, Waltrip and Terry Labonte.
""When I won my 100th race, people asked me what I wanted to
do next, and I told them win 200 races, he said. "When I won my
200th, they asked me the same question and I said, "I want to win
my 201st. That shows you how much things have changed.
Petty also has won the most poles, 127; most races in a
season, 27; most in succession, 10; has the most consecutive
starts, 513, and the most starts, 1,185. He has won seven Winston
Cup championships, seven Daytona 500s and nine times been voted
most popular driver.
Harvey Duck, the STP publicist who has accompanied Petty on
most of his excursions this season, estimates that Petty can sign
as many as 300 autographs an hour, even though he elaborately
lavishes swirls and curlicues and No. 43 on each one. That adds up
to 30,000 or more at the formal autograph sessions held at this
year's 29 Winston Cup races.
""It still surprises me when somebody stands in line for
hours just to ask for my autograph and then says thanks, he said.
""I should be the cat doing the thanking.
In return, Petty will go anywhere to meet his fans. En route
to Northern California for a race at Sears Point, he stopped off at
a Pontiac dealership in Hastings, Neb., to sign some autographs.
)
Seven hundred turned out.
The day after the Hastings visit, he was at the Oakland
Coliseum for an Oakland A's-Boston Red Sox game, where he threw out
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The Houston Chronicle, November 15, 1992
the first ball.
""I was afraid I was going to bounce the ball to home plate,
but I got it all the way there,' he said. ""That really made me
feel good.
The next day was IIII Richard Petty Day'' at Sears Point
Raceway. There was no racing, just an autograph session. An
estimated 5,000 showed up.
When a similar outing was scheduled at Bristol, Tenn., last April, it was
raining and sleeting, but fans stood outside for more
than an hour, waiting to step inside for a face-to-face meeting
with the King.
""You should have seen them cats. They was dripping with
water and their hands were so cold they couldn't hardly hold the
paper, Petty said. ""All that for a little old piece of paper
with my name scribbled on it. It really touched me, if you know
what I mean.
When Petty, who spent a season in drag racing, rode down the
drag strip at Indianapolis as grand marshal during the National Hot
Rod Association's U.S. Nationals on Labor Day, longtime racing
observers said he received the longest and loudest reception in
Indiana motorsports history. When an autographed Petty hat was
offered at auction, top-fuel driver Ed McCulloch won the bidding at
$ 3,100.
Each hat is a masterpiece fashioned by an old friend, Charley
One Horse, and retails at up to $ 1,000, depending on how much
frufru is used. On the one Petty is wearing this week, the band is
a mix of pheasant and quail feathers and raccoon and python skins,
trimmed with mink bones.
At Dover, Del., Petty introduced Gwaltney's Richard Petty Hot
Dogs -- now the official hot dog of the fan-appreciation tour.
""My family taste-tested about eight major brands (of hot
dogs) before we picked Gwaltney's to put our name on,'' he said.
Hot dogs, hats, corn flakes, toy race cars, sunglasses, fuel
additives, shirts, racing jackets, soft drinks, headache powders --
you name it, all carry the Petty imprint. It will probably continue
as long as the King is active in racing - next year as the owner
of car No. 44 with Rick Wilson the driver. But the driving era ends
Sunday. And when Petty retires after today's race, 50 will No. 43.
""I hate to give in to age, but maybe it has something to do
with it, he said when asked what prompted his retirement. ""It
was a lot of fun.
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16TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 15, 1992
SECTION: SPORTS; Section F; Page 3
LENGTH: 1328 words
HEADLINE: THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION SPECIAL REPORT RICHARD'S LAST RIDE:
THE MAKING OF A LEGEND
BYLINE: By Raad Cawthon STAFF WRITER
KEYWORD: automotive; racing; personalities; retirement; public; reations
BODY:
Richard Petty became "The King" of stock cars by winning more races and
signing more autographs than anyone else. Today at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he
bids his fans farewell in his final start
'The King' with the common touch Setting the standard: For racing success and
for graciousness with the public, the accomplishments of Richard Petty make
his NASCAR reign one of a kind.
It was 1967. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, 464,000 American troops
were in Vietnam, and The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was on
the record charts.
In the heart of the South, on the asphalt at Darlington, S.C., and
Rockingham, N.C., and Martinsville, Va., on the dirt at Hickory, N.C., and
Greenville, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., the sport of stock car racing was
experiencing an equally momentous development. Richard Petty, driving the No.
43 Plymouth, was setting two records that aren't ever likely to be broken -
winning 10 races in a row and 27 in a season.
That's when they dubbed him "The King."
"I guess it was in '67," Petty recalls. "Four or five of the regular writers
gave it to me."
"King" is a title reserved for a precious few who transcend their sport or
their art. Arnold Palmer in golf. Elvis Presley in music. Petty in racing.
"They'll be talking about him forever, just like they do Elvis or Frank
Sinatra," said Wayne Walden, who made the 12-hour drive from his home in
Tri-City, Wash., two weeks ago to watch Petty race in Phoenix for the last
time.
In 1967 Petty was on his way to a record 200 career victories, seven
Winston Cup championships and seven victories in the Daytonal 500. He was the
greatest racer of his day, an era that included the likes of Junior Johnson, Ned
Jarrett and an up-and-coming David Pearson.
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"You're talking about the gods, the best guys there were behind the wheel,"
said Phil Holmer, Goodyear's tire manager for Winston Cup who has watched Petty
race since 1966.
Petty has not won a race in eight years. He is 55, and even his own crew
members admit he no longer has "the fire in the belly" that it takes to push a
winning stock car around the track. He races today in the Hooters 500 at Atlanta
Motor Speedway for what he says will be the last time.
But Petty, as much because of the kind of man he is as his driving, is still
"The King.' And not just in the South, either.
Mike Zimmerman is group product manager for STP, Petty's main sponsor. "We're
based in Danbury, Conn. he says, "which is not a hotbed of NASCAR racing.
Richard was here a few months ago and we took him out to lunch in a local
restaurant. We figured nobody would bother him. As soon as we walked in
everybody turns around, everybody came up and asked for an autograph. Those
kinds of things happen all over the place. Obviously his appeal is strongest
among NASCAR fans and in the South, but every sports fan knows who Richard
Petty is."
And not just every sports fan in America, either.
Ann Lewallen Spencer is chairman of the board of Goody's, the headache powder
company that is another of Petty's biggest sponsors. "I was in China five years
ago," she says, "and they knew him over there. A little guy said, 'Oh, 43! Yes,
I know that.
Petty's career has come full circle. "At the start he was an underdog,"
says Kyle Petty, Richard's son and a third-generation NASCAR driver. "He was
racing Junior [Johnson] and he was racing Ned [Jarrett]. And the Plymouth wasn't
a big car. And then he rolled it over and became king of the hill and was
winning all these races
A lot of other people said, 'we want to see
somebody else win'
Then
all of a sudden he quit winning races. Their
attitudes changed again
[They said] 'we want to be there that one last
time when he wins that one last race. He's gone from being the underdog to
being the king of the hill to being an underdog again."
Through it all, Petty's devotion to the sport never wavered. "Richard's
determination and his willingness to give his whole life to it is how he
accomplished what he accomplished," says Junior Johnson, now a car owner.
"Nobody else has ever given to the sport their whole entire life. Seven days a
week, 24 hours a day he raced. No one else has ever done that."
Jarrett, a two-time NASCAR season points champion, says simple common sense
helped make Petty a winner.
"He very seldom would ever over-drive the car. He would drive it as hard as
he figured it could be driven and still be there at the end of the race."
H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler, president of Charlotte Motor Speedway, is another who
talks about Petty's driving style. "I think the main thing about his success on
the track he was a very, very smooth driver," Wheeler says. "He had the ability
to contain his emotions inside a race car. He would not get mad where he would
abuse the race car.
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Yet Petty's personality, even more than his talent, was the secret to his
popularity.
"What's made him so popular?" says Holmer. "That's easy. Not that he's a
winner, not that he's won more championships, more Daytona 500s or more races
than anybody. It's who he is, the way he is Richard Petty to the fans. The man
knows who pays the bills. He's taken it to heart his entire career to do as
much as he could for the fans as possible. That's his greatness by far."
The stories are legendary and almost endless of Petty winning races and then
spending hours signing autographs and having his picture taken with fans. In a
sport where fans have more access to the athletes than in most, other drivers
marvel at Petty's patience.
"He always has time for autographs," says driver Ernie Irvan. "Sometimes the
fans are all over you. They can be real obnoxious. I almost got tackled by a
woman awhile ago. Sometimes it's SO bad that you can't do your job. But Richard
never seems to change."
For young drivers on the circuit, Petty's career has spanned all their
memories of their sport.
"I grew up in Nashville and they used to run in Nashville," says Sterling
Marlin. "I think it was a 200-mile race and Richard used to run up there. My
father was in racing 50 I was a fan even then. I guess I was 10 years old and I
knew that track pretty well. I knew a hole in the fence where I could get
through. I could slip through the fence. That year Richard won, and I did that,
and I was the first one to get to his car after he won the race, and I got his
autograph."
Michael Waltrip, whose brother Darrell was one of Petty's prime competitors,
admits he probably wouldn't be on the NASCAR circuit without a helping hand from
"The King."
"I was just two years out of high school in Owensboro, Ky., and I had won the
[NASCAR] Dash Series [for sub-compact cars]," says Waltrip. "I didn't have
anything - no money, no car, no job, nothing. A mutual friend persuaded Kyle
Petty to help me out. Kyle told me I could live with him and his family and he'd
get me a job at Petty Enterprises for a few months until I could find a deal for
another Dash car and get my feet on the ground. It was about 80 miles round trip
between Kyle's house and Petty Enterprises.
"One night I was getting in the car to go back and Lynda Petty [Richard's
wifel came out of her house and said, 'You know, it'd be a lot closer to work if
you just stayed at our house. Come on and stay with us. I ended up staying with
them for a year.
"I think about the kindness they showed me every day. They didn't have to
take me in, feed lite, do my laundry and give me a place to sleep. When I wrecked
my street car, they even gave me a car to drive.
"I found out Richard Petty is the same in the garage area as he is at home
watching TV on the couch. He's the real article. His help made me want to be
like him. I take more time with the fans.
When Dale Jarrett, Brett Bodine
or I think we're busy and a kid wants an autograph, we say to ourselves,
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'Would Richard be too busy?' No. He's set a standard we all have to follow."
Jonathan Ingram contributed to this article.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Richard Petty waits beside his familiar No. 43 car before the
start of the Motorcraft 500 in March at Atlanta Motor Speedway / JOHNNY CRAWFORD
/ Staff Photo: Sponsors have found Richard Petty one of the sports world's
most recognized figures / JOHNNY CRAWFORD / Staff
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THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
DATE: 7/21/92
NOTE FOR: SHIRLEY GREEN
The President has reviewed the attached, and it is forwarded to you
for your:
Information
XXX
Action
Thank you.
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
(x2702)
cc:
THE PRESIDENT
July 20, 1992
To: Phil Brady
Re: Medal of Freedom
Inasmuch as we sometimes honor sports
legends please consider RICHARD PETTY, the
"King" of auto racing who retires this
year-with a record unmatched by any other.
any
GB
THE NEW YORK TIMES BIOGRAPHICAL SERVICE
March, 1975
Richard Petty: A Cool, Careful Superstar
By JERRY BLEBSOE
The community of Level Cross lies on
Years ago, the enterprising Southerners who made backyard whisky
the edge of the North Carolina Pied-
souped up their cars in case they had to flee the revenooers. From those
mont, & crossroads on U.S. Highway
220, 12 miles south of Greensboro, five
beginnings came stock car racing, a sport widely popular in the South
miles north of a little river town called
and, in recent years, in other parts of the country. The most successful
Randleman. There isn't much in Level
stock car driver is Richard Petty. These passages about Petty and bis
Cross-neat, comfortable, middle-class
houses, a trailer park, a couple of
family are taken from "The World's Number One, Flat-Out, All-Time
churches, a nice brick community center
Great, Stock Car Racing Book," by Jerry Bledsoe (Doubleday, $8.95)
with a lighted baseball field out back,
Copyright 1975 by Jerry Bledsoe. They are printed here with permis-
the new volunteer fire department build-
sion of the publisher.
ing across the road-but it may be the
best-known crossroads community in
'A man don't want to git
above his raisin's, you know.'
pyright © 1975 by The New York Times Company
363
March, 1975
THE NEW YORK TIMES BIOGRAPHICAL SERVICE
the South. The reason W is Level Cross's
work, although he had once given some
doesn't worry.
only industry, No. 1 tourist attraction
thought to going to college and becom-
"I guess I'm not a very emotional per-
and leading family. All bear the name
ing a high school eoach, which was
son," "I never have been."
Petty.
what his wife had hoped he would do.
It would be hard to imagine what It
Richard Petty is the superstar of
"I never set out to be no superstar or
would take to shake his unemotional,
stockcar racing. He lives less than a
nothing like that, "he told me one night.
easy-going, level-headed, common-sense
mile down the road from the volunteer
"It was a gradual thing. One thing just
builds on another, and I never had much
approach to life.
fire station in a modest, red brick-ranch-
time to think about it."
Wrecks on racetracks certainly don't
style house. His younger brother, Mau-
Richard Petty IS a careful race driver.
do it, and he has had many of those, In
rice, one of racing's best mechanics,
He is known as a driver who drives with
the spring of 1970, he survived one of
lives in another brick house across the
his head, as opposed to a flat-out, stay-
the most spectacular racing wrecks ever
road. Next door is a stately white house
in-front-at-all-costs driver. "I don't wor-
seen at Darlington. The most vividpart
with a big front porch and a stone foun-
dation, a house that Richard Petty's
ry about him," says his wife, Lynda. "I
of the memory was seeing Petty's left
grandfather built. Here, with his wife,
know that he'll be careful. It's the other
arm flopping limply outside the window
Elizabeth, lives Lee Petty, now the fami-
drivers I worry about."
as the car flipped and rolled.
ly patriarch, a man who decided to go
Richard Petty really does not know
Drivers and crew members in the pits
racing in the late forties and took his
fear or anxiety, not in the sense that
ran to the car fully expecting to find
two young sons with him. Lee Petty be-
came one of the great drivers of his day
most people do, anyway. Driving a race,
Petty dead. He looked dead hanging
and held the record for winning races
makin a movie, appearing on TV; meet-
there in the remains of the car, with him
and national championships until his
ing the President, eating super, playing
limp arm still outside the window. He
with his kids-it's all the same to him.
was taken to the track hospital uncon.
son came along and blitzed it.
Next to the big white house, built
He goes about everything in the same
scious, but although badly battered, his
around an old farm shed where Lee Pet-
way: Take it as it comes, inspect it, de-
worst injury was a dislocated shoulder.
ty put together his first race cars, is the
cide the best way of going about it, and
"Hurt my dang shoulder," he told the
do the best you can. If anything bothers
worried-faced doctors when he had 10.
center of Petty Enterprises, a cyclone-
gained consciousness.
fence-enclosed compound of big blue
him, it never shows. He doesn't get
and white steel buildings-a factory, no
scared, excited or nervous, and he
March 9, 1975
less, and the only product is race cars.
The Pettys were country people,
simple, decent, God-fearing and friendly,
as most country people are, and they
Rutherford Platt Dead at 80;
had remained country people. Perhaps
as much as any other family, the Pettys
Nature Writer, Photographer
represented what America was sup-
posed to be about. They had believed
and worked hard, and all the good
Rutherford Platt, nature
graduated from Yale in 1918.
things that were supposed to happen as
writer, photographer and lec-
Gradually he became inter-
a result had come to them. Yet it hadn't
turer, and former advertising
ested in nature's phenomena
changed them. They were still the same
executive, died Friday in Bos-
and attended classes at the
down-to-earth people they had always
ton at the age of 80.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
been.
Giving up golf and the usual
If any of the Pettys were going to
For his book, "This Green
purs is of business men, he
change, it should have been Richard, for
World," published by Dodd,
had explored since 1930 what
all the pressures and opportunities had
Mead & Co. in 1942, Mr. Platt
he called "the showmanship
surely been his. He had become rich and
won the bronze medal of the
of nature."
famous, a hero. He had paid his respects
John Burroughs Association in
After having worked on the
at the White House and toured Vietnam
1945 for "a literary work in
editorial staff of World's Work
to visit the troops. Hollywood had made
the field so eminently occupied
during his life by John Bur-
and with Doubleday Page & Co.,
a movie about his life, and he had
roughs." His other books in-
in the early twenties, Mr.
played the leading role (doing a cred-
itable job, too; he was at least as good
cluded "Our Flowering World."
Platt became a founder and an
an actor as, say, Elvis, or Rory Calhoun,
"American Trees," "Wilder-
officer of Platt-Forbes, Inc., an
both of whom had starred in dreadful
ness," about North America's
advertising agency represent-
stockcar racing flicks).
natural history and the men
ing national food and industrial
who discovered and explored
accounts. In the mid-fifties he
But his friends, neighbors and the
it, and "The River of Life,"
became president of Platt Pro-
people around the racetracks would be
about things and how they sur-
ductions Educational Films,
the first to say that Richard Petty had
vive and reproduce.
from which he later retired.
never got "the big head."
"Same ol' Richard," says Ronnie
Mr. Platt was botanist with
Mr. Platt was a fellow of the
Rear Adm. Donald B. Mac-
American Association for the
Hucks, who has been a friend since high
school days.
Millan's Arctic expeditions in
Advancement of Science and a
1947 and 1954. He was
member of the Ecological
Richard sums up the Petty attitude
succinctly: "A man don't want to git
biology adviser to the Disney
Society of America. He had
above his raisin's, you know."
True Life Films in the early
been a director of the Park As-
When he was 21, Richard decided he
author of "Walt Disney's
sociation of New York City.
would like to try his hand at driving in
Secrets of Life," published in
Surviving are his widow, the
a race. He'd expressed some interest
1957.
former Jean Dana Noyes; two
earlier, but his father asked him to wait
Mr. Platt himself was noted
sons, Rutherford Jr. and
until he was 21.
for his close-up, enlarged
Alexander; three daughters,
It wasn't something that Richard had
photographs of plant life. He
Lampard, Susan Carmalt and
a burning passion to do. It was some-
also made nature films.
Barbara; a brother, a sister;
thing he thought he ought to try, just.
He was born in Columbus,
nine grandchildren, and three
to see if he liked it. He liked being a rac-
Ohio, on Aug. 11, 1894, served
great-grandchildren.
ing mechanic, and was sure that he
as a lieutenant with the field
would be happy making that his life's
artillery in World War I and
March 30, 1975
364
The New Bork Times BIOGRAPHICAL SERVICE
August 1988
King Richard in Heavy Traffic in New York
F
OR a driver hoping to appear in
his 500th consecutive race this
because it's their living. I'm not in
any hurry, so I should be defensive."
Sunday, Richard Petty did a tre-
He said he relates to drivers of com-
mendously rash thing this week: He
mercial vehicles because "they got to
went for a drive in New York.
make a living, so you don't holler at
This is a man who has survived two
them too much when they cut you
broken necks - one without him
off."
knowing it - assorted broken bones
He has driven in the jumble of Sai-
and bruised ribs (the most painful of
gon, with rickshaws and jeeps and
all) and the upended, car-parts-flying
taxis and bicycles blending from all
crash at Daytona last February.
sides, and he has driven in the round-
But these accidents were against
abouts of Australia, and he said,
the good old boys of the left-turn cir-
"They all work together." He has
cuit. This week King Richard tested
never been to Europe, and driving in
his talents against the cutthroats and
Los Angeles is tame "because every-
lunatics of Manhattan who jeopardize
body is driving their own stuff."
the last few rational drivers left
"Here in New York, you got a lot of
among ús.
company cars and rentals, and they
"Ready?" asked the 51-year-old
don't care," he said. "We go to some
legend of the Southeast, wearing his
Associated Press
of them races, you got 400 cars
trademark sunglasses, blue jeans
Richard Petty
squeezing into one lane, you just roll
and sport shirt and elegant-looking
your windows down and say, 'Hey,
black pointed boots. He is gaunt a
man, this is a rental.' You see them
decade after surgery for ulcers, in-
and give me a ticket, and I've had
cats just back off because they' still
curred without ever driving in New
people apologize for stopping me."
making payments on their own car."
York.
Midway through a block, a young
man bolted out from behind a van,
King Richard glided through Little
"Usually, I just sit in a cab and let
Italy and Chinatown and past Wall
somebody else do it," Petty said, as
glaring at the car the way a matador
Street. He said he once visited the
he strode across Park Avenue to his
might stare down a bull in Madrid.
Stock Exchange and saw competi-
rented Pontiac at that New York phe-
"The thang that gets me about New
tiveness he had never seen at Dar-
nomenon- the $30 garage.
York is not the trucks and the buses
lington, S.C., or Talladega, Ala.
The man who has won seven Dayto-
but the people," he said. "You don't
"I'm thinking to myself, 'You're
nas and a total of 200 races - al-
mind running into the car. You just
sitting down there in North Carolina,
though none, Gary Carter, since July
don't want to run into people."
little old county commissioner, not
4, 1984, which was 118 races ago - is
Flowing down Second Avenue,
bothering anybody, and here these
already the Lou Gehrig of racing,
Petty said he had no problems watch-
people are, deciding your future, hoo-
about to start his 500th straight race
ing film clips of his car standing on its
front end at Daytona: "I'm not in-
pin' and hollerin' like this.'
at Michigan International Speedway
With traffic extremely light on the
volved in it. It's just a picture of
on Sunday.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, Petty
No. 43. I don't feel it's part of me. If I
With gentle acceleration, Petty
chortled and opened it up.
ever got in a bad wreck, I might feel
rolled up the garage ramp and into
"If I go to Daytona, doing 200, and
different."
the street. He said: "My wife comes
Even with the injuries, Petty has
you throw me out here, that's one
up here four or five times a year to go
thing," he said. "Here if it's 30, I can
not missed a start since 1971, when he
shopping or go to the shows or just
had a disagreement with a promoter
go with the flow. My wife just goes
piddle around. She gets to where she
berserk when I go home after the
over appearance money, which was
knows the streets from the avenues,
race. I pull out in traffic, I'll go right
legal in those days, before the Win-
but I don't pay no attention."
ston Cup point system made it desira-
out yonder and around."
Petty rolled east on 50th Street
ble to drive every Sunday. Petty ad-
until a traffic officer waved off all
SKED if he ever had a bad acci-
mitted he has started a few races
traffic except taxis and buses. He
"and then turned it over to somebody
A
dent in traffic, Petty said, "I've
made a smooth left without hitting
been fortunate. I've bent a
else" - like going out for a pinch-hit-
her, grinning and saying, "Shoulda
fender now and then, but I don't con-
ter after one turn at bat - but he has
sider that a wreck." He said he hoped
slipped in behind that bus."
competed enough times with broken
Informed that drivers cannot make
to keep driving because "it's hard to
bones to justify a few token appear-
a right turn on a red light in the city,
give up any habit you really like."
ances.
he promised to obey regulations be-
After Petty signaled for a right into
Near the Midtown Tunnel, a young
cause New York officers just might
man tried to make a left turn from
the garage, a bicyclist tried to cut
him off. Petty turned anyway, and the
not recognize the King of Level Cross,
the right lane. Petty anticipated and
N.C.
bicyclist swerved into the curb, losing
let him through, chuckling and say-
"It's been a pretty good while since
his own game of chicken. Petty
ing, "Go a-hayed." He said he likes to
I got a ticket," he said. "I try not to
chuckled about it all the way back to
mutter at his peers, too. "Well, now,
get stopped. I don't want to be obli-
the Waldorf Astoria. Hey, New York
what are you doing?"
gated to anybody. We travel a lot and
might be fun, after all.
Philosophical question: Should one
that 55-mile speed limit is just a sign.
drive aggressively or defensively in
You got to get somewhere, you got to
city traffic? Petty replied: "It de-
August 17, 1988
get somewhere. I've had people get
pends what your goal is. With taxi
out and say, 'Ah-ha, Richard Petty!'
drivers, they have to be aggressive
921
Copyright C 1988 by The New York Times Company
Oscar Peterson
CELEBRITY REGISTER 1990
Oscar Peterson
his book was released King Richard 1: The Autobiography of America's Greatest
Auto Racer and in 1989 he appeared on screen in the film Speed Zone.
"I could never think of giving up what I'm
doing," says this fleet-fingered technocrat of
the keyboard, much to the delight of his ap-
Regis Philbin
preciative fans in all parts of the globe. British
jazz critic Benny Green echoes the sentiments
of aficionados as far afield as Russia, Africa
Regis Philbin, co-star of "Live with Regis and
and the Far East when he asserts that Oscar
Kathie Lee" (the ABC morning show which
Emmanual Peterson "today stands as one of
went national in 1988) traveled a long hard
the greatest soloists of all time, a player whose
road until he finally found "his" show.
technique never obscures the lucidity of his
Born in New York on August 25th and
thoughts or the wonderful buoyancy of his
raised in a strict Catholic family it was quite a
execution."
leap for him to turn towards show business.
"Start early-and stay with it." says the
He caught "the bug" in 1958 during a stint as
piano-organ-clavichord whiz who as a young-
an NBC page on Steve Allen's "Tonight"
ster used to practice more than eight hours a day. Born 15 August 1925 in
program. It was this particular form of enter-
Montreal, Quebec, he's the son of a Canadian Pacific railway porter whose
tainment (talk show host) which appealed to
five youngsters had formed their own family band. Oscar took up the
him, so he packed his bags and did whatever
trumpet at the age of five, but after a bout with TB (hospitalized a year),
he could (he was a stage hand, a truck driver)
switched to the piano and had his own radio show by the time he was in his
until he eventually landed a job in San Diego
mid-teens. He scored his first U.S. triumph when jazz impresario Norman
as a news broadcaster and talk show emcee. His first big break came in 1964
Granz brought him to New York's Carnegie Hall in 1949 for a Jazz at the
when he caught the eye of comedian Joey Bishop who had his own talk show.
Philharmonic concert. Down Beat reported then that Peterson "stopped the
Regis was hired and played a marvelous second fiddle to Bishop's dry and
concert dead in its tracks" and that's been the pattern of Peterson perform-
depressed sense of humor. Their relationship was grand. "Regis Philbin is
ances (both with and without his trio) ever since. Still associated with
like a son to me. He's one of the nicest persons I've ever met," said Joey of his
Granz's Pablo Records, he is probably the most recorded jazz pianist of all
announcer. The show eventually failed and in 1981, NBC gave him a shot at
time, having often performed in tandem with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald,
his own show, but this one did not succeed.
Count Basie, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie.
However, his new format with Kathie Lee Gifford, provides just the right
Known in recent years for his composing as well as his virtuoso pianistics,
chemistry. Jeff Jarvis, critic of People magazine, describes his unique ability
Peterson created a suite to celebrate the Royal Wedding of England's Prince
to play with people and not offend them. "He may seem like a game show
Charles and Princess Diana. His best-know work is "Canadian Suite," each
host with no prizes
Sure he's pleasant and charming but don't hold that
movement of which commemorates a different area of his native Canada.
against him. He's also witty, if harmlessly so. He can insult guests and get
Married (five children), the award-winning jazzman (12 consecutive years
away with it. He can talk about mundane frustrations in his own life
and
as Down Beat's "Best Jazz Pianist") still practices tirelessly. "The only
not put us back to sleep." This is an art which very few can master.
musician I ever heard of who didn't need to practice," he says, "is a fellow
Accordingly. he is very popular with his fans.
named Gabriel. But he has wings."
Occasionally, you can see him appearing with his present wife, Joy, (he
was first married to Catherine Faylen, a former TV actress, and has two
children from this marriage) when Kathie Lee is on vacation. He is
wonderfully irascible, describing his daily exasperations at life in the Big
Apple. Everyone knows he has two more teenage daughters that drive %im
Richard Petty
batty and that he doesn't own a car, but prefers to rent "clunkers." Why buy
a car when these rentals provide him with such marvelous material for his
show? He is a fine craftsman, for he makes his work appear effortless, the
The greatest stock-car racer in the world is a
sign of a true professional.
good ol' boy from Level Cross, North Caroli-
na, by the name of Richard Petty. Born 2 July
1937 to Elizabeth and Lee Petty (one of the
early stock-car racing greats). not-so-little
Lou Diamond Phillips
(6'2". 195 lbs) Richard ("If my mother had
wanted to call me Dick, she would have named
me Dick") has won more NASCAR Grand
Initially thought of as the "kid who got a lucky
National titles than any other driver, making
break," Lou Diamond Phillips has proven
him the "undisputed 'king' of stock-car racing."
himself to be an actor worthy of impressive
Petty contends that he is only 25% respon-
roles. Born 17 February 1962 in Arlington,
sible for his victories. that his car (once a
Texas, Phillips developed a yearning to act in
Plymouth Roadrunner, more recently a Ford
the sixth grade. Carrying his interest through
or Chevrolet) deserves 50%, and his pit crew
his school years he studied the dramatic arts
25% of the credit. Not that his cars appear out of the blue: they are put in top
while attending the University of Texas. Dis-
shape by his brother Maurice and cousin Dale Inman at the huge (35-plus
playing an insatiable appetite to learn and
employees) Petty Enterprises garage in Level Cross. Says Richard of his pit
perfect his craft. Phillips studied film tech-
crew: "We average about 22 seconds per stop. Other guys take 25 seconds.
nique vigorously with Adam Rourke. Having
The difference is worth between halfa lap and a full lap, depending upon the
appeared in numerous theater productions,
size of the track." Always concerned about safety, the Pettys were the first
among them Whose Life Is It Anyway? P.S. Your
stock-car competitors to use a roll-bar, a nylon window screen, and a
Cat Is Dead, and Hamlet. Phillips moved into
helmet-cooler. and have employed the use of two-way radios for communi-
television with spots on CBS-TV's "Dallas", NBC'S "Miami Vice" and an
cation with the pit. His cars are painted blue and red with the number 43
NBC Movie of the Week "Time Bomb." Although experienced and some-
(Lee Petty's number was 42) on the side.
what recognized, Phillips was basically unknown until that fateful day when
Married in 1958. Richard and Lynda have four children, Kyle (also a
he was cast in the role of Richie Valens in the Columbia feature La Bamba
NASCAR racer), Sharon, Lisa and Rebecca. The family resides in Level
(1987). The film, which Lou is deeply indebted to and proud of, propelled
Cross, a few miles from Lee Petty's house and the family business. In 1986
him into the throes of stardom. Since his "lucky break," Phillips has starred
338
platinum prints of Penn's September 1977 retro-
Irving Penn and fashion model Lisa Fons-
spective at New York's Marlborough Gallery,
sagrives, married since 1950, have a grown
exclusive dealer of his prints since 1976. One
son, Tom; she also has a daughter, Mia, from
reviewer praising Penn for the overall quality
an earlier marriage. The Penns live on Long
of the exhibition, Owen Edwards maintained
Island. Penn, who believes firmly in his right
that "there is more sensual pleasure per square
to privacy, rarely grants interviews and al-
inch than can be found in the work of any
most never sits for portraits. "The camera
other living photographer." The third 1977 ex-
makes me nervous," he once said, knowing as
hibition of Penn's platinum prints was mounted
few people can the power of that instrument.
in Stockholm in November.
"It's like a razor blade-I'd like to protect my-
self from the incisions it can make." Hence
The year 1977 was also noteworthy in Penn's
career for the publication of his third book,
Penn's photographic images without his self-
Inventive Paris Clothes 1909-1939 (Studio/Vi-
image are preserved for posterity at the Smith-
sonian in Washington. the Metropolitan and
king). which records his impressions of Diana
the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
Vreeland's 1973-74 costume show at the Metro-
the Art Institute of Chicago, and leading
politan Museum. Mrs. Vreeland supplied text
museums in other cities.
and captions. Penn explained his reason for
creating the book: "I'd always heard of clothes
created in the previous era, but I'd never
References: Camera 35:14+ Je '75; N Y Times
come into contact with them. When I went to
Mag p19+ S 4 '77; Popular Photography 42:66-
the show at the Met, I was staggered by their
My '58; Vogue 136:200+ N 1 '60; Who's Who
fantasy and workmanship and immediately
in America, 1980-81
decided to do a book, simply because of the
sheer pleasure of looking at them." The result-
ing photos reveal a fascination with the gar-
ments' richness of details such as beading,
embroidery, and fabric textures. Critics pro-
claimed the book a lovely evocation of a lost
era in fashion.
Penn's platinum prints have traveled afar in
GOODSYEAR
the past two years-to Stephen White's Gal-
lery, Los Angeles, in February and March 1978;
to Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto, in December
1979; to Mancini Gallery, Philadelphia, in May
1980. In June and July 1980 New York's Inter-
national Center of Photography included Penn
pieces in a show of thirty-one Americans
whose work shaped the photography of the
1950's. A collection of eighty platinum prints,
organized by the Marlborough and the Western
Association of Art Museums, was scheduled
to tour seven Western cities until 1981.
"Earthly Bodies," a recent New York ex-
hibition, which opened on September 4, 1980
at the Marlborough, is a collection of seventy-
six silver prints of voluptuous nude torsos
that revealed Penn's private work of 1949-50.
His monumental treatment of what Grace
Glueck of the New York Times (September 5,
1980) called life's "underside" transforms fat
flesh into icons of quintessential Woman in
much the same way that it immortalizes cig-
Petty, Richard
arette butts and street material. Proclaiming
it "one of the most striking exhibitions of
recent memory," Douglas Davis of Newsweek
July 2, 1937- Race driver. Address: Route 3,
(September 22, 1980) asserted that the show
Box 621, Randleman, N.C. 27317
proved Penn's incurable passion for "the
physical splendors of pure color, form and
The undisputed "king" of stock car racing is
the photographic process," which is respon-
Richard Petty, a "good ol' boy," a hero of what
sible for "his extraordinary triumphs and
might be called the Old South, who has won
magnificent excesses." Another revelation of
more races, logged more miles, and set more
that magnificent excess is Penn's book of
records than any other driver in the history
seventy-three luminous color prints of poppies,
of motor sports, with the possible exception of
roses, lilies, orchids, begonias, peonies, and
A. J. Foyt. Unlike Foyt, who is best known for
tulips, published the same month under the
his "Indy" and formula car driving, Petty sticks
title Flowers (Crown).
exclusively to stocks, specially built versions
1980 CURRENT BIOGRAPHY 309
of ordinary passenger cars, such as the Ply-
Grand Prix, Indianapolis, and sports-car classes
mouth, which Petty used to drive, and the
of auto racing. "Open-wheeled racing cars
Dodge and Chevrolet, which are among the
never were big in the South," Petty explained
current racing vehicles customized for him in
to Frank Orr, author of World's Great Race
his shop in Level Cross, North Carolina. Petty
Drivers (1972). "Not even the midget racers
began racing under the tutelage of his father,
could draw a crowd. I guess it's because people
the now retired stock car champion Lee Petty,
in the South are poor and those fancy race cars
in 1958. The National Association of Stock Car
are so exotic that they don't know what to
Auto Racing records he holds include those
make of them. People can identify easily with
for prize money (more than $3,000,000); for
stock cars. If a top driver is racing a Chevrolet,
races won (about 200 in 800-plus starts); for
a lot of folks will come to see him because
Winston Cup Grand National championships
many of them drive Chevrolets. In stock cars,
(seven); for victories in the Daytona 500 (six),
we do some real racing. Those Indy cars are
the most prestigious event on the annual Grand
so delicate that they can never touch each
National circuit of thirty-odd races: and for
other without a lot of trouble. At the end of
Most Popular Driver awards (nine). bestowed
one of our stock car races, the cars are so
by NASCAR in accordance with an annual poll
banged up that we take all the sheet metal off
of fans, When asked by a reporter a few years
and throw it away. It doesn't hurt the cars any
ago what accomplishment he took the most
and we really race each other."
pride in, he replied, "I guess in still bein'
The coming of age of stock car racing was
alive."
signaled by two events: the forming of the
Richard Lee Petty was born on July 2, 1937
National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing
to Lee and Elizabeth Petty in Level Cross,
(NASCAR) in 1948 and the opening of the first
North Carolina, a tobacco-growing hamlet in
stock car super-speedway, at Darlington, South
the township of Randleman, a few miles south
Carolina in 1949. Lee Petty became one of the
of Greensboro. His birthplace was the house
first champions of the sport, winning three
(next door to what is now the Petty Enter-
national titles (based on points accumulated in
prises compound in Level Cross) that was built
an entire season) and a total of fifty-four Grand
by his grandfather and is now his father's.
National events, a record that would be broken
"We lived in several places when I was grow-
by his son.
ing up, but the house I remember best was the
Serving as an apprentice mechanic to his
one my father built when I was about nine,"
father, Richard Petty was, as he noted in
Petty wrote in the more recent of his two auto-
Grand National, "sort of the NASCAR mas-
biographical books, King of the Road (Mac-
cot," working in the pit (semiofficially at first,
millan, 1977). "It started as an old construction
because he was underage) and observing the
trailer and he made it into three rooms. He's
evolution of the sport as attendance grew,
almost the same height as I am, six-two, and
NASCAR rules were refined, and small-town
he couldn't stand up straight in the kitchen
dirt tracks and road courses were replaced
without hitting his head. All four of us slept
by super-ovals. The evolution of stock car
in one tiny room."
racing notwithstanding, the pugnacious Lee
Lee Petty, who ran a small trucking business,
Petty never lost the grittiness he had ac-
quired in the early days, when he raced on
spent his spare time rebuilding and "souping
backroads or dirt fields against men many
up" secondhand cars and racing them at night
of whom had learned their driving techniques
along dark stretches of North Carolina high-
transporting "moonshine" in defiance of
ways. Growing up in a racing environment,
law. From his father, Richard Petty absorbed
Richard, with his younger brother Maurice
the two lessons that have inspired his style:
and his cousin Dale Inman, staged races first
it is "more important to be smooth than
in toy cars, next in wagons, and then on bicy-
cles.
flashy" and "it's not the fastest car that wins
the race, but the quickest." He also learned,
When Petty was in grade school he earned
as he says, to treat racing, from the building
pocket money by picking tobacco on Saturdays
of the cars to the driving, "as a business,"
and holidays. At Randleman High School, as he
a serious enterprise calling for day-by-day
recalled in his first autobiographical volume
preparation and week-by-week competition.
("as told to" Bill Neely), Grand National (Reg-
After graduating from high school, Petty
nery, 1971), he was "an average student
took a business course at Greensboro (North
not much on studying" and "only went to
Carolina) Junior College and then began work-
three or four dances or school functions." A
ing full-time in the Petty Enterprises shop as
good all-round athlete, he made all-conference
well as the pit. "From the time I was twelve
as a guard on the high school football team.
years old until I was twenty-one," Petty re-
but only one sport had him in thrall, and that
counted in King of the Road, "I did every-
was stock car racing.
thing there is to do to a race car except drive
Stock car racing began as a backcountry
it-built it, worked on it, pitted it, tore it
pastime, chiefly in the southern United States.
down, whatever. When I was in high school
In the years following World War II it blos-
and people asked me whether I wanted to be
somed into a major spectator sport, the blue-
a driver, I'd say no, I was happy just to work
collar alternative to the more sophisticated
on my Daddy's car. Maurice was working on
310 CURRENT BIOGRAPHY 1980
the car, too. Later, when we were old enough,
embankment and smashing into a group of
we each decided to try driving, and several
spectators. Petty was thrown clear, but six
times back in 1960 all three Pettys were in
people were seriously injured and an eight-
the same race. Maurice did a lot better in
year-old boy was killed.
his first ten or twelve races than I had done,
Chrysler and Petty returned to stock car
but then he flipped his car and figured he'd
racing in 1966, when Petty was flagged the
had enough. 'From now on,' he told me, 'you
victor on the super-ovals at Darlington (the
drive 'em and I'll work on 'em.' And that's
Rebel 400), Atlanta (the Dixie 400), and Day-
how it's been ever since. But I know what
tona, where he became the first person to
it's like to work on the car because that's
win the 500 twice. In the Daytona event he
how I got started. Some people still tell me
was slowed by seven pit stops and eight tire
I'm a better mechanic than a driver; I guess
changes and seemed beaten when he fell two
that's a compliment."
laps behind at one point, but he flashed into
Petty began racing shortly after his twenty-
the lead at the finish by more than a lap. His
first birthday in one of his father's discards,
average speed over the more than three hours
an old Oldsmobile that he himself tuned up
was 160.627 mph.
and ultimately smashed up. He won no races
Petty assumed his position as the best
but felt good about the $76 he took home
stock car racer in history in 1967. In that year
from his eight efforts that year. The following
he set a new NASCAR record of twenty vic-
year, continuing to drive old cars of his
tories (nine more than the old mark); passed
father's, he entered twenty-one races and fin-
his father's career mark of fifty-four; won
ished among the top ten nine times. In that,
three super-speedway events, including, for
his first full official season, his earnings
the first time, the Southern 500; placed in the
came to nearly $8,000, and the members of
top five in thirty-eight of forty-eight races;
NASCAR voted him Rookie of the Year. The
and easily took his second Grand National
$8,000 was only a token return on his ex-
championship. As quoted in the press, he at-
penses, however. "I didn't win anything in
tributed 25 percent of his success to himself;
the first couple of years," he has said. "I
50 percent to his equipment; and 25 percent
spent a lot of my father's money in racing
to his pit crew. "We average about twenty-
cars. But he never said anything about it. He
two seconds per stop," he pointed out. "Other
just let me find my own way in the sport."
guys take 25 seconds. The difference is worth
In February 1960 Richard Petty posted his
between a half lap and a full lap, depending
first Grand National victory on the half-mile
on the size of the track."
dirt track in Charlotte, North Carolina, and
In 1969 Petty switched from Plymouth to
he finished second in the point standings that
Ford cars and won only ten races. The follow-
year with top-five finishes in sixteen of forty
ing year he returned to Plymouth and was
races. When serious injuries forced Lee Petty
beginning again to tear up the speedways
off the track, in 1962, he turned all the driving
when he was stopped by the worst accident
over to Richard and went to work in the pit.
of his career. On the fourth turn of the Rebel
Richard's responsibility for carrying on in his
500 at Darlington his Plymouth glanced off
father's place gave him, as he said, "a lot of
the concrete wall, flipped several times, and
desire." In 1963 he won fourteen races and
landed upside-down, with a demolishing
was again runner-up in point standings. His
crunch. Amazingly, Petty came away with
first super-speedway victory was in the Day-
only a dislocated shoulder, and he returned
tona 500 on February 23, 1964, when he
to competition within six weeks and finished
streaked around the 2.5-mile Daytona oval at
the season with eighteen victories in forty
a record-breaking average speed of 154.334
starts. In 1970 the Petty team also fielded a
miles per hour. In sixty-one events in 1964,
car for Pete Hamilton, who won the Daytona
he won nine and finished in the top five
500 and several other NASCAR events. (Petty
thirty-seven times, collecting $98,000 in prize
Enterprises still occasionally builds cars for
money and 40,252 points for his first Grand
drivers other than Petty.)
National championship.
Out of forty-six races in 1971, Petty won
An important factor in Petty's success in
twenty-one, including his third Daytona 500
1964 was the powerful new 426-inch hem-
(ten seconds ahead of Buddy Baker) and the
ispherical head engine, produced by Chrysler.
Dixie 500 (highlighted by a fierce automotive
that he had begun using in Petty Plymouths.
duel with Bobby Allison). His purse for the
Before the beginning of the 1965 season,
Dixie 500 boosted his career earnings over
NASCAR made an engine size limitation that
the million mark, to $1,018,203, a financial
in effect outlawed the Chrysler "hemi," and
frontier that had only twice before been
Chrysler temporarily withdrew from stock car
reached in all of auto racing, by A. J. Foyt
racing, as did Petty. He turned to drag racing,
and Al Unser. His season earnings were a
a test of pure acceleration over a quarter-mile
record $309,225, and he won his third NASCAR
strip, but his excursion into hot-rodding was
Grand National title-something only his
brief, culminating in the saddest day of his
father and David Pearson had done before
career. On a drag strip in Dallas, Georgia one
him.
afternoon a snap in his car's left suspension
In 1972 Petty broke the last of his father's
sent the car out of control, skidding up an
major records by taking the Grand National
1980 CURRENT BIOGRAPHY
311
title a fourth time, and his career mileage
We took it [the Monte Carlo] home and rebuilt
reached an unprecedented 100,000 miles. In
it. We knocked it clear down to the frame,
1973, 1974, and 1975 his victories were rela-
checked out every piece before we put it
tively few-respectively six (out of twenty-
back together. It's got all new sheet metal and
eight), ten (out of thirty), and eight (out of
a new paint job."
seventeen), but in those years he finished in
Petty's brother, Maurice, builds the engines
the top five fifteen, twenty-two, and twelve
for the cars that he drives and sells (for
times; his earnings were $159,665, $299,175,
$40,000 or more each), Dale Inman, a cousin,
and $169,815.
supervises the car building, and other rela-
Not until 1975, after making sixteen tries,
tives are among the staff of thirty-three at
did. Petty win the Firecracker 400 on July 4
Petty Enterprises. The cars are assembled from
at Daytona, whizzing across the finish line
the ground up at the Petty Enterprises com-
two seconds ahead of Buddy Baker. With a
pound next to Lee Petty's house in Level Cross,
couple of laps to go in the 1976 Daytona 500,
where Richard commutes by bicycle between
he and David Pearson were neck and neck
the offices, prefab garages, machine shops, and
when they collided; while Petty tried to start
paint rooms. The crew goes to races in a truck,
his engine, Pearson, hungry to take his first
a workshop on wheels, which cost $100,000 to
Daytona, coaxed his battered Mercury across
equip, while Petty and his family travel in a
the line. In Winston Cup championship points
van.
that year, Petty placed second to Cale Yar-
Putting the emphasis on preparation and
borough. In mid-1977 his career winnings
safety, the Pettys were the first competitors
neared $2,500,000 as he won the Atlanta 500
in stock car racing to use a roll bar, a nylon
(in Hampton, Georgia), the World 600 (in
window screen, a helmet cooler (which circu-
Charlotte, North Carolina), and his second
lates cool fluids through tubes surrounding its
Firecracker 400 (a seventeen-second victory
interior), and two-way radios for instant com-
over Darrell Waltrip). Then he slid into a
munication with the pit. The cars Petty drives
losing streak that lasted for forty-four races.
are painted blue (the original Petty color) and
When Petty was in the midst of his year-
red (for STP, the fuel additive manufactured
and-a-half slump, friends and even some mem-
by Andy Granitelli, Petty's sponsor) and num-
bers of his family began to think that perhaps
bered 43. (His father was number 42 in NAS-
it was time for him to retire, to turn the
CAR competition.) Winning the pole, or inside
responsibility for carrying on the Petty legend
position, is not of great concern to him. Be-
to his son, Kyle, who was beginning to make
ginning a race slowly, he habitually chooses a
a name for himself on the Grand National
high groove, usually the third lane. At least
circuit. "He's got his career and I've got
one observer has attributed to Petty a "sav-
mine," was Petty's response. "They might
age" instinct for the checkered flag, but he is
overlap to a certain extent, but as long as I
hardly a brute behind the wheel. As a writer
enjoy racing and do it well enough to make
for Sports Illustrated (February 27, 1967)
some money I'll keep going."
noted, his movements are "deft and beaute-
Shortly after Christmas 1978 Petty's physi-
ous," he is "a thinker, and, most important,
cian discovered that he had a bad stomach
he has the feel," and he is "not fascinated by
ulcer. When Petty came out of surgery with
speed or oblivious to fear." Petty has ex-
half his stomach gone, many observers thought
plained that while he is "not fearless, by any
that now, surely, his career was through. But
means" he is as always been too busy in
during recuperation he returned to the Grand
race car "to have time for worry," that even
National circuit, where he broke his losing
when cars have turned over on him "when
streak on February 18, 1979. In the Daytona
they came back up on the wheels I'd still be
500 on that date he trailed a distant third
trying to steer." His racing philosophy is a
until Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough col-
realistic optimism: "I know I'm not going to
lided on the last lap and he roared to an un-
win every race, but I expect to win going into
precedented sixth win in the event. Petty
every race."
went on to compete in all thirty-one Winston
Petty has investments in an air-freight
Cup races, to win five of them, to finish in
depot, a motel, and a bank in Charlotte, North
the top five twenty-three times, and to nose
Carolina. His business manager, Bill Preddy,
out Darrell Waltrip for his seventh NASCAR
started his fan club (now numbering about
championship.
15,000 members) and arranged for the produc-
Petty won the 1979 championship driving A
tion of a movie, The Petty Story (Rowland-
Monte Carlo in the Times 500 on November
Lasko, 1974), starring Darren McGavin as Lee
18. "We took a few days between Ontario and
and Richard as himself. Stockcar! (Victory,
Phoenix (a Winston West race on November
1978) also featured Petty, along with Cale Yar-
25, 1979] and a couple of days off at Christ-
borough and David Pearson, among other ace
mas," he recounted to Shav Glick of the Los
drivers.
Angeles Times (January 13, 1980). "That's
Richard Petty (who is always addressed by
about all the celebrating we did. There's a
those close to him by his full first name, never
whole lot of work to do tearing down old cars
as Dick) and Lynda Owens, who was a cheer-
and getting them prettied up for the new year.
leader at Randleman High School, were mar-
312 CURRENT BIOGRAPHY 1980
ried in 1958. (Petty confessed to Lynda at the
Petty is a member of the three-man board
time that he loved her "more than any other
of commissioners of Randolph County, a po-
person in the world," although not more than
sition to which he was elected in 1978. "I
race driving.) In addition to their son Kyle
used to be not that interested in politics," he
they have three daughters, Sharon, Lisa, and
told a reporter in 1978, "but I see things in
Rebecca. The Pettys live in a large $250,000
this little old community that I didn't see
house they built a couple of miles down the
five or ten years ago." A right-wing Republi-
road from Lee Petty's house. Surrounding the
can in the tradition of North Carolina's Sena-
house is a farm, tended by an uncle, Bottle
tor Jesse Helms (whom he endorsed in his
Millikan, where Petty raises a few cattle and
successful bid for reelection in 1978), Petty
horses and 24,000 chickens.
believes in limited government and preserva-
The tall, wiry, curly-haired stock car cham-
tion of the family and the family farm. Thur-
pion wears dark glasses when he drives, and
man Hogan, who sits on the Randolph County
during the racing season he acquires a deep
board of commissioners with Petty, has said;
tan that accentuates his friendly, pearly grin.
"Richard Petty's the most refreshing thing to
Those who have interviewed him have des-
come along in politics in a long time, be-
cribed him as "a veritable lamb," "reserved,"
cause of his innocence." One of Petty's
"gracious," and possessed of "a medieval
favorite sayings is, "You don't ever want to
courtliness, flavored with grits and ham
get above your raisin's, you know."
hocks" and an "awkwardness" before audi-
ences unusual in a person of such celebrity.
A religious man, Petty attends Mount Lebanon
References: Motor Trend 30:110+ Mr '78 por,
Church, a Methodist Church in Randleman, on
30:97+ S '78 por; N Y Times V p6 Ag 3 '75
the Sundays he isn't racing and makes a
por; People p53+ Je 27 '77 pors; Sports Ill
practice of reading the Bible to his children.
43:28+ Il 14 '75 pors, 51:83+ N 26 '79 pors;
He is a teetotaler but he smokes cigars
Braun, Thomas. Richard Petty (1976); Burch-
(usually a cheap brand, such as Muriel Coro-
ard, Marshall and Sue. Richard Petty (1974);
nella Kings), and he unwinds by watching
Libby, Bill. "King Richard" (1977); Petty,
television with his children or shooting pool
Richard. Grand National (1971); Petty, Rich-
(he has a table in his house).
ard. King of the Road (1977)
Pfeiffer, Jane (Cahill)
Sept. 29, 1932- Corporation executive. Address:
b. c/o NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza,
New York City, N.Y. 10020
After serving NBC for only twenty-two months
of her three-year contract, Jane Cahill Pfeiffer
was relieved of her duties as chairman, in
July 1980, by the company's president, Fred
Silverman, the man who had proclaimed her to
be a "major acquisition" at the time of her
appointment in September 1978. Speculation
concerning the reasons for her abrupt depar-
ture was rife in the American press. Some
journalists attributed her fall from power to
her lack of experience in broadcasting and her
insistence on quality programming in what is
considered a crassly commercial industry; oth-
ers conjectured that she had had a destructive
effect on employee morale. Although some
NBC executives found her easy to get along
with, others nicknamed her "St. Jane," "the
Ayatollah," and "Attila the Nun." The negative
feelings about Mrs. Pfeiffer at NBC sharply
contrasted with those of her former colleagues
at IBM, where the chairman called her one of
States Marine Corps, is now an equipment
"the ablest executives" he had ever known.
salesman for IBM. According to family friends,
Helen Cahill's resourcefulness in forging 8
Jane Cahill Pfeiffer was born in Washington,
successful career for herself following her
D.C. on September 29, 1932 to John Joseph
husband's sudden death, when Jane was only
and Helen (Reilly) Cahill. Her older brother,
seven, left an indelible impression on her two
Jack, who spent many years in the United
children. As Michael VerMeulen noted in his
1980 CURRENT BIOGRAPHY 313
PAGE
2
1ST STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
February 15, 1992, Saturday, Final Edition
NAME: RICHARD PETTY
SECTION: SPORTS; PAGE 63
LENGTH: 840 words
HEADLINE: The Long Goodbye: Petty Has Earned It
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: Ken Denlinger, Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Feb. 14, 1992
BODY:
For Richard Petty, 1992 will be the goodbye lap. His farewell tour -- 30
races over 10 months -- is uniquely long because he almost surely has meant more
to stock-car racing than anyone in the sport.
"He is the one, the ambassador of Winston Cup racing, The King, whatever,"
said Dale Earnhardt. "HE gave back to racing more than he's taken out of it."
Honest and unpretentious as always in an appreciation piece by a local paper
this week, Petty said of his decision to leave racing in his rearview mirror
after 35 years and at age 54: "Not winning races, not finishing races, not doing
the things the team was capable of doing. All of it adds up. It's a little bit
of everything.
"God might have given ME 25 years of good luck, and 1 may be trying to
stretch it to 35. Maybe He's trying to tell me something, like: 'Hey, you better
get out of this thing before something happens to you and 1 can't look out for
you no more.
$5
Petty hasn't won a race in nearly eight years. But since his first success,
Feb. 28, 1960, in a Plymouth at Charlotte, his records include:
200 NASCAR victories (David Pearson is next with only 105).
Seven NASCAR seasonal championships.
Seven Daytona 500 victories.
27 victories in one season (1967, over 48 races).
10 consecutive victories (1967).
Becoming the first NASCAR driver to win $ 1 million (1971).
513 consecutive starts.
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The Washington Post, February 15, 1992
"He's a racer's racer,' said Dick Beaty, NASCAR's director of competition.
"By that { mean he's not always bitching about this or complaining about that.
HE just gets in the car and does the job."
Petty and the most famous stock-car track are memorably interconnected. His
father, LEE, won the first Daytona 500, in 1959. In all, 10 of Richard's NASCAR
victories, including the 200th, have come here. Also his most scary accident
occurred on Turn Four, in 1988. His car Flipped seven times, but he walked away
with only minor injuries.
Before his 32nd Daytona 500, From which he will start in 32nd place Sunday,
he has not gotten emotional; he will return to the track July 4 for a 400-miler.
An illustration of why he 15 so admired by everyone even remotely connected
to racing took place here Thursday during a period of about 20 minutes and a
stretch OF about 20 yards in the garage area.
He was the first person to console Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs after a spinout
put his car out of a 125-mile race. Shortly thereafter, Petty accommodated a
television reporter on deadline, then joked with a security guard and signed
dozens OF pictures and programs.
"The First race I won here, in 1964, was the First race 1 had ever run on a
superspeedway," he said. "We just blew everybody away. We had a good day and a
good handling car. We had always had a good handling car. Then all of a sudden
they gave us some horsepower and we just blew them away
It was probably
one of the easiest races WE ever won."
Petty 15 skinny as a gearshift these days, perhaps 50 pounds lighter than the
220 he carried as an offensive lineman for Randleman (N.C.) High School.
Said CTEW chief and cousin, Dale Inman: "As kids, WE would build wagons and
coast in them. Nothing like a soap box car that you see today. Maybe we would
sit on a dad-burn axle and have a rope to steer it with.
Then we'd build a
bicycle track and water the corners to make it slick. That's the way we grew up.
"WE went to the same swimming hole and got poison oak all over us. Pole Cat
Creek, it was called, and it was always cold. And you were liable to see a water
moccasin slide in there with you.
"When hE got his license, he always had a car to drive. Most of the time it
was a race car converted back into a road car. We did a lot of things WE
shouldn't have done off the highway. We got our share of speeding tickets.
Course WE got away a lot of times too."
For that first stock-car victory, nearly 32 years ago, Petty won $ 800. A set
of tires goes for about $ 1,100 these days -- and a car might go through seven
or eight sets during a 500-mile race.
His final season is being called a "Fan Appreciation Tour." A decal promoting
it is on the rear of his No. 43 car, and thousands of others are being sold. A
percentage of the proceeds here help a local high school's football team.
If Petty should unexpectedly become competitive this season, he might be
tempted to scrap his plans for car ownership and stay behind the wheel. That's
TM
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The Washington Post, February 15, 1992
what his equal as a driving legend, A. J. Foyt, has done.
"When Foyt made his announcement, I hadn't made mine," Petty said. "But I had
already made up my mind. 1 knew what 1 was going to do. He didn't handle it too
good. I felt like I didn't need to handle it like that.
"A. J. was hurting [after an ugly accident in September 19901, but then he
went to Indy and ran pretty good and then he wasn't hurting as bad. It's a hard
thing to give up. I had to sit down and figure out a program, for TITE and the
sponsors and the fans. So when I say I'm going to quit, I'm going to quit. What
I tell you, you can pretty well bank on."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, RICHARD PETTY: "IT'S A HARD THING TO GIVE UP. I HAD TO SIT
DOWN AND FIGURE OUT A PROGRAM, FOR ME AND THE SPONSORS AND THE FANS.", AP
TYPE: NATIONAL NEWS, BIOGRAPHY
SUBJECT: AUTO RACING; RETIREMENT FROM SPORTS
NAMED-PERSONS: RICHARD PETTY
TM
TM
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Services of Mead Data Central. Inc.
Renveleble
THE WHITE HOUSE
JME I've
WASHINGTON
sent orig to
November 9, 1992
Phil today.
but enter in
MEMORANDUM FOR SHIRLEY GREEN
FROM:
BRENT SCOWCROFT B
your records -
Ag
SUBJECT:
Presidential Award for General Vessey
Please add General John Vessey's name to the list of those being
recommended for the Presidential Citizen's Medal.
General Vessey has worked tirelessly since 1987 as the
President's Special Emissary to Hanoi for POW/MIA matters. The
results achieved to date in determining the fate of our MIAs are
largely attributable to his efforts. His actions merit special
recognition in the form of the Presidential Citizen's Medal.
PAGE 11
30TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1985 The Washington Post
October 1, 1985, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: First Section; A3
LENGTH: 812 words
HEADLINE: Joint Chiefs Head Vessey Retires in Character;
General Ends 46 Years Of Life as Soldier
BYLINE: By George C. Wilson, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Gen. John William Vessey Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the
last four-star combat veteran from World War II on active duty, retired in
character yesterday as he bade farewell to 46 years of life as a soldier:
"Thanks. Thanks, troops."
The 63-year-old Vessey, who enlisted in the Minnesota National Guard as a
17-year-old private in 1939 and received a battlefield commission while fighting
on the beachhead of Anzio, Italy, in 1944, always considered himself a mud
soldier. He saved his final words for those serving in that capacity.
A smiling President Reagan looked on as Vessey bade farewell in a cavernous
hangar at Andrews Air Force Base filled with dignitaries, well-wishers and
ceremonial troops. Before Vessey took the microphone to make his last official
remarks, Reagan saluted the soldier who had served as his primary military
adviser the last four years.
"Gen. Vessey will be remembered for many things," Reagan said, but one
accomplishment stands above all the rest: "Jack Vessey always remembered the
soldiers in the ranks. He understood those soldiers are the backbone of any
army. He noticed them, spoke to them, looked out for them. Jack Vessey never
forgot what it was like to be an enlisted man, to be just a G.I."
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, a World War II Army veteran, saluted
Vessey's "unshakable integrity" and "wisdom with vision." But he said the
general's most valued attribute in the Pentagon's bureaucratic forest was his
"great common sense, the soldier's humor, the soldier's insight."
Vessey will be succeeded today by Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., former U.S.
commander in the Pacific.
Shortly after Vessey was named by Reagan to the military's top job on June
18, 1982, the general called a meeting of top officers who would serve with him
at the Pentagon. He told them, according to participants, that if they did not
believe in miracles, one was standing in front of them -- himself. He said he
never expected to end up as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
The general went on, participants said, to lambaste the news media and warn
officers to avoid friendships with reporters. He blamed the media for the firing
of Maj. Gen. Jack K. Singlaub, who served as Vessey's deputy in Korea.
Then-President Jimmy Carter relieved Singlaub after he ignored a warning and
spoke out a second time against the administration's plan to withdraw some
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U.S. troops from Korea.
Vessey kept his distance from the media during most of his four years and
thus had a low profile outside the military establishment. But inside the
military he won praise for bringing dignity and honor to the chief's job, for
pulling the four services together and for resisting attempts to make sweeping
changes in the structure of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Reagan rejected advice from Vessey and the other chiefs, who warned against
sending Marines into Lebanon a second time. The Marines subsequently met
disaster when a terrorist drove a pickup truck full of explosives into their
compound at the Beirut airport in October 1983, detonating the load and killing
241 servicemen. The Marines were withdrawn.
The other two big military operations conducted on Vessey's watch were the
invasion of Grenada and the bombing of Lebanon in December 1983. The Grenada
operation rescued Americans on the island but brought criticism of serious
miscues among the four services involved. The December bombing was also
criticized for being badly flawed in timing and execution. Two bombers were
lost.
Otherwise, Vessey's four years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs were
tranquil compared with his nine predecessors. He had no fractious Vietnam war
nor deep cuts in the budgets of the armed services. The volunteer military
attracted soldiers and sailors considered more motivated and intelligent than at
any time since the draft was abolished. Congress and the president also provided
record amounts of money for peacetime.
Vessey, as chairman, was not formally in the military chain of command.
Instead he was limited to recommending courses of action and transmitting the
president's orders from the secretary of defense to theater commanders around
the world. There are numerous proposals in Congress to give the chairman more
power. But Vessey's view was that the organizational structure of the chiefs
is not broken and therefore does not require fixing.
Vessey, in his farewell remarks, chided Congress for "dabbling too deeply"
in defense matters and said the lawmakers will waste more money than they will
save by trying to reform the Pentagon. "Stop dabbling," Vessey pleaded, "and
judge us by broad objectives" set down for the military.
The general and his wife, Avis, left Washington shortly after the retirement
ceremony for their lakefront home in Garrison, Minn., their 29th and - as Avis
Vessey has indicated --- final move.
GRAPHIC: Picture, Gen. John W. Vessey Jr. stands with the president at
retirement ceremony. AP
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USA TODAY, October 27, 1992
But it was hardly a sudden development. Retired general John Vessey made
five trips to Hanoi over the past two years seeking release of all information
on U.S. soldiers. Vietnam may have decided to play its hand out and try to
strike a deal normalizing U.S. relations now instead of
FOCUS 1 OF 75 STORIES
Copyright 1990 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
December 22, 1990, Saturday, City Edition
SECTION: LIVING; Pg. 13 P
LENGTH: 946 words
HEADLINE: Quotes of a Life -time;
NAMES AND FACES
BYLINE: by Michael Blowen, Globe Staff
Life magazine has compiled the best quotes of 1990. A sampling:
- "Oh, dear, I could ask for help here. The name, I know, is very familiar."
- Ronald Reagan, giving Iran-contra testimony, asked to identify Gen. John W.
Vessey Jr., his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- "Does Mike Tyson live near here?" - Nelson Mandela during a visit to New
York City.
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(c) 1988 The Washington Post, December 25, 1988
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When, in 1987, President Reagan asked Vessey to become his personal POW/MIA
emissary to Hanoi, it had become obvious that Vietnam had slowed its previous
cooperation in dealing with these issues. Vessey met with Vice Premier Nguyen
Co Thach in Hanoi in August 1987, and the two men agreed to make a fresh start
by reconfirming pledges to separate humanitarian issues from the political
differences between our countries.
The Vietnamese, however, had an additional concern. They felt that U.S.
concern for humanitarian needs was one-sided, that it ignored the humanitarian
needs of their own people, especially the largely untreated problems of the many
survivors severely maimed during the war. With the president's authorization,
Vessey agreed that, within our legal and policy constraints, the United States
would facilitate private efforts to improve care for their disabled.
Following this agreement, Vessey sent teams of medical experts to Vietnam.
Our team's mission, involving four trips thus far, was to review Vietnamese
needs for prosthetics and orthotics -- devices to replace or strenthen damaged
limbs. Another team has made three trips to review disabilities among Vietnamese
children.
These trips have not been pleasant excursions. Each time, we have learned
more about the severe deprivation suffered by this struggling country of 66
(c) 1988 The Washington Post, December 25, 1988
FOCUS
experts believe that 40 percent of all children in Hanoi under age 3 are
malnourished. Protein and vitamin deficiencies cause blindness, dermatitis,
rickets and slow physical and mental development. At one center, I saw a mother
-- sadly only one of
on one end and a small scoop on the other. The mother is told that if her
child has diarrhea, she should fill the small scoop with salt, the big one with
sugar and put them into a cup of boiled water to feed the child. Education
projects like this are essential to overcome age-old folkways. For example, if
children have diarrhea, Vietnamese peasants traditionally do not give them
anything to eat or drink.
The teams sent in by Vessey produced two reports which were distributed to
private American humanitarian organizations for their evaluation. Many of those
organizations have responded by providing prosthetic materials and equipment to
existing rehabilitation centers, beginning surveys for possible construction of
regional prosthetic facilities and sponsoring visits of Vietnamese specialists
to observe our procedures and technology. One group is now planning a trip to
Vietnam to do reconstructive surgery for children suffering from facial and
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71ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 Star Tribune
Star Tribune
September 27, 1992, Metro Edition
SECTION: News; Doug Grow; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 968 words
HEADLINE: Erecting of this wall meant knocking some down in the process
BYLINE: Doug Grow; Staff Writer
BODY:
Thousands came to a wall Saturday that not so long ago few had wanted to
support.
There were retired generals and political leaders, who gave their best
speeches. There was an Army band playing grand marches.
But most stirring was the sight of the thousands of people who came to
search for a name on the granite wall at the Minnesota Vietnam Veterans
Memorial, which was dedicated on the State Capitol grounds. The names of 1,120
Minnesotans are engraved on that wall, which is the focal point of the $ 1.2
million memorial.
In the midst of 50 many people (Capitol security estimated there were
10,000), so many dignitaries and so much emotion, it was hard to imagine the
struggle to build the memorial had been 50 great.
But this memorial, first dreamed of by a woman named Teresa Vetter, was a
project few had wanted to support - at least with money. Vetter was a sophomore
in high school when the war ended. It was a war that never pounded into her home
50 tragically as it did into the homes of many. The brother of a friend of
Vetter's was killed; that was her personal link to the war.
But always, she said, she had been moved by the youth of the soldiers. Even
now as she looks at the project that she did 50 much to build, it is the youth
that moves her.
"I think, even a hundred years from now, that is the thing that will make
people stop and think about Vietnam," she said. "I think they will come here and
see that the average age of those killed was what, 19? I think they will say,
'My God, they were so young. It
It was when the Vietnam War memorial was dedicated in Washington in 1982
that Vetter first thought there should be a Minnesota memorial. But it wasn't
until 1987 that she took the first step that no one else apparently was going to
take. She looked in the Yellow Pages for Vietnam vets' organizations and found
just one listed. She asked that organization's members to share her dream. The
group agreed and in the following years, she said, hundreds of others eagerly
joined the volunteer effort.
But dollars didn't come with the volunteers.
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Star Tribune, September 27, 1992
Gary Lindsay, a Vietnam vet and a member of the board of directors of the
Minnesota Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee, spoke at the dedication of how
traditionally generous Minnesota corporations weren't interested in a memorial
to Vietnam vets. Companies quick to pledge support to sporting events and rock
concerts weren't interested in being tied to Vietnam and all the pain tied to
it.
"Many companies, including companies that made huge profits from the Vietnam
War, wouldn't support this," Lindsay said.
So it took thousands of small contributions to build this shrine - as well
as a few flukes and quirky fund-raisers. A key fluke occurred in 1989 when Doug
Carlson, who was a state representative from Sandstone at the time, happened to
hear a commercial about efforts to raise funds for the memorial while driving
home one night. Carlson was 50 touched by what he heard that he urged the state
Legislature to come up with $ 300,000 for the project.
And in the fall of 1991 there was the strange sight of a 58-year-old woman,
Sally Adams, camped on a billboard near Forest Lake. Adams proclaimed she wasn't
coming down until $ 73,000 was raised to move the project from the drawing board
to construction. She was on that billboard for 21 days before Golden Valley
businessman Bill Popp came to her rescue and the memorial's aid with a $ 50,000
contribution.
Now, the project stands dedicated.
Retired Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland, former commander of U.S. troops
in Vietnam, spoke, as did retired Army Gen. John Vessey, former head of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
(Vessey took a couple of risks in his short talk. He said Minnesotans "need
to remember the suffering" of a new group of Minnesotans, the Laotians,
Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians driven from their homes by the war. Vessey
also seemed to try to calm emotions tied to the issue of U.S. prisoners of war
and MIAS, saying that people of goodwill are doing everything possible to find
answers.)
But the most moving speeches came at the wall from people such as Joe
Peterson, whose younger brother was killed in Vietnam. Peterson said he had
vowed he would take care of his brother when they were in Vietnam. Then he broke
down, saying he hadn't been able to keep his pledge. At the wall he was consoled
by Delores Truhler, whose son was killed in Vietnam.
The speeches came from people such as Lorraine Storck, who is 70 now and
calls Texas home. In 1969 she lived in St. Cloud, where she and her late husband
had raised their family. On the day the family was celebrating the return home
from Vietnam of son Jim Gilliespie, a Marine car stopped at the home where the
celebration was taking place. "That car drove up," she recalled, "and I
thought, 'No, it can't be.' But it was a Marine car. I knew something bad had
happened." Her 19-year-old son, George Gillespie, had been gravely wounded in
Vietnam, the celebrants were told. His legs had been blown off from a land mine
explosion. Eighteen days later her son died.
Yesterday, she was at the wall. Tears in her eyes, she placed a sheet of
paper over her son's name and rubbed charcoal across the paper. The rubbing of
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Star Tribune, September 27, 1992
her son's name on the Minnesota wall will be framed and placed next to a picture
of her son, who had been a high school athlete and dreamed of being a diplomat
after he came home.
"This matters," the mother said. "I can't tell you how much it matters."
Said Vetter, whose dream turned to reality yesterday: "By no means is this
memorial a glorification of war. To me it's simple. To me it says, 'Never forget
and never again. I 11
SUBJECT: military; building; opening; veteran; death
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1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Hartford Courant Company
The Hartford Courant
November 7, 1992, a Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. d10
LENGTH: 373 words
HEADLINE: Breaking the impasse with Vietnam
BODY:
For two years, retired Army Gen. John W. Vessey Jr. tried to close the
book on American soldiers still unaccounted for in Vietnam. Now it looks as
though an Indiana Jones-type character will figure prominently in that final
chapter.
Theodore Schweitzer, an American adventurer, accomplished what the general,
a Senate investigative committee and five presidential administrations failed
for years to do. He found thousands of documents relating to missing U.S.
soldiers and cajoled Vietnamese officials into letting him have them.
The United States had set the release of the documents as a condition for
normalizing relations with Vietnam. But for years the Southeast Asian country
failed to deliver promised information.
Mr. Schweitzer, in his research for a book, discovered photographs and other
documents concerning MIAs in Hanoi's military museum in February. With the tacit
approval of the Vietnamese, he turned them over to the Pentagon.
Hanoi then agreed to let Pentagon experts see all of the military museum
records. President Bush in turn has increased flood-relief aid to Vietnam,
fueling hope that he might lift a U.S.led international embargo of the country.
Mr. Bush ought to take the opportunity to normalize relations with Hanoi and
put the war to rest. U.S. goals are much better served by helping rebuild
Vietnam than by continuing to undermine it.
The president credited Gen. Vessey with the breakthrough, but the real
hero is Mr. Schweitzer, the Missouri native who has worked in Indochina for
years, supplying medicine to Vietnam and even protecting boat people from
pirates.
Not even he can take full credit for the change of heart in Hanoi, however.
Vietnam is destitute and has been desperate to get Mr. Bush to end the economic
blockade.
Japan's announcement that it intends to resume economic aid to Hanoi this
month means the days of the international embargo are numbered.
Relations between Washington and Hanoi are due for normalization. After all,
the war ended nearly two decades ago. Vietnam will not serve its interests by
withholding information on missing Americans. As for U.S. policy-makers, they
must chart a course that avoids penalizing the key state in Indochina.
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132ND STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1991 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
July 20, 1991, Saturday, City Edition
SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 181 words
HEADLINE: By General, veterans set MIA meetings
BYLINE: Globe Washington Bureau
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
KEYWORD: NAME-KERRY VIETNAM MISSING PERSON PROBE
BODY:
Army Gen. John Vessey has agreed to meet regularly with veterans groups
to share information on US servicemen missing in action in Southeast Asia.
After meeting Thursday with three senators, including John F. Kerry of
Massachusetts, Vessey, President Bush's special envoy on POW and MIA issues,
agreed to provide frequent briefings to the veterans groups so they can exchange
data.
"I hope this move will be a small step toward reestablishing some credibility
between the Defense Department and POW-MIA families who have suffered for years
in a process that is sometimes less than open and helpful," Kerry said.
Kerry returned recently from Vietnam, where he persuaded government
officials to allow US veterans groups to travel more freely in the country to
pursue leads in seeking the fate of American MIAs from the Vietnam War.
Kerry will meet with several other senators next week in hope of scheduling a
Senate hearing on complaints by families of the missing servicemen that the
Pentagon has been unresponsive to their concerns and the leads they have
uncovered.
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7TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
May 24, 1992, Sunday, 2 STAR Edition
SECTION: PARADE; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1353 words
HEADLINE: A Nobel laureate asks graduates - and the rest of us - to think about
what education really means;
HAVE YOU LEARNED THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF ALL?
BYLINE: ELIE WIESEL
BODY:
Elie Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, is
currently Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. A
native of Transylvania, he was captured by the Nazis at 15 and
imprisoned in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps,
where nearly all his family died. He is the author of some 30
books, including ## Night' and his newest, ""The Forgotten.
Speaking as an American citizen, a writer, a teacher and a witness
to history, Wiesel has an urgent message for the graduates who will
be entering the world in these uncertain times.
FIRST, I WOULD LIKE TO congratulate you. For you and your
parents, the day of your graduation should be marked by joy and
celebration. Your years of study and work have brought triumph,
which rewards you, honors your teachers and brings pride to your
families.
And now you are ready to say farewell to your classmates and
face both the privileges and obligations society will feel entitied
to place upon you.
How will you cope with them?
May I share with you one of the principles that governs my
life? It is the realization that what I receive I must pass on to
others. The knowledge that I have acquired must remain imprisioned
in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with
it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it
gratitude.
Isn't this what education is all about?
There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human
beauty in tolerance.
To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not
begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in
their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations
of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples.
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The Houston Chronicle, May 24, 1992
I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are
you.
You and I believe that knowledge belongs to everybody,
irrespective of race, color or creed. Plato does not address
himself to one ethnic group alone, nor does Shakespeare appeal to
one religion only. The teachings of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. do not apply just to Indians or African-Americans. Like
cognitive science, theoretical physics or algebra, the creations
and philosophical ideas of the ages are part of our collective
heritage and human memory. We all learn from the same masters.
In other words, education must, almost by definition, bring
people together, bring generations together.
Education has another consequence.
My young friends, I feel it is my moral duty to warn you
against an evil that could jeopardize this generation's
extraordinary possibilities. That evil is fanaticism.
True education negates fanaticism.
Literature and fanaticism are forever irreconcilable. The
fanatic is always against culture, because culture means freedom of
spirit and imagination, and the fanatic fears someone else's
imagination. In fact, the fanatic who wishes to inspire fear is
ultimately doomed to live in fear, always. Fear of the stranger,
fear of the other, fear of the other inside him or her.
Fanaticism has many faces: racism, religious bigotry, ethnic
hatred. What those faces have in common is an urge to replace words
with violence, facts with propaganda, reason with blind impulses,
hope with terror.
For a while we might have believed that fanaticism was on its
decline. It is not. Quite the contrary, it is on the rise in our
cities, in our country and in our world.
In Western Europe-in Germany and France, Belgium and
Austria-we are seeing a resurgence of yesterday's demons of fascism
and intolerance. In Eastern Europe, ethnic factions re rekindling
old conflicts. In the Middle East, deeply held hatreds seem ever on
the verge of sparking more raging conflagrations. ""It's us against
them'' has been taken as essential truth. Strangers are being
greeted with animosity almost everywhere.
Let us look at our own country. As this last decade of a
century, which is also the last decade of a millennium, runs to its
dazzling denouement, we seem ever more divided. Can't all our
citizens-white Americans and African-Americans, Hispanics and
Asians, Jews and Christians, Jews and Moslems, young and old-live
together, work together and face their common challenges? Must
they-must we-constantly subject ourselves to useless social
tensions and dangerous ideological conflicts that could turn joy
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The Houston Chronicle, May 24, 1992
into dust and creation into ashes?
We face many difficulties and must find answers to thorny
questions if our nation is to flourish: What has happened to our
economy? What went wrong with elementary and secondary education?
Why are 50 many youngsters seduced by crime? By drugs? By hate? Why
is there 50 much bloodshed in 50 many quarters?
The answers to these questions do not lie with the cliches,
senseless stereotypes and absurd accusations that are being used to
justify religious or ethnic hatred. Evil forces are at work-some,
to my embarrassment, unleashed by my fellow teachers-and something
must be done to heal the effect of their poisonous theories.
In the New York City neighborhood of Crown Heights last year,
a black child was killed when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went
out of control and jumped the curb. Already strained tensions
between the black and Hasidic communities exploded. A young Hasidic
man was killed, and a black man was arrested for the murder. For
days and weeks, the streets were filled with scenes of violence and
hatred. The incidents left deep scars.
We must ask ourselves if we, as a nation, want to be reduced
to addressing our problems with violent actions. Will we allow
street wars at home to succeed armed conflict abroad?
As a Jew, I have witnessed the consequences of anti-Semitism,
which is one of the oldest group-prejudices in history. We Jews
have been accused of many sins. Now we are perceived as the group
that wields more power than any other. I have heard good people,
say this-decent people, intelligent people. Don't they know that
not all jews have power? That not all those who have power are
Jewish? Haven't they ever heard of poor Jews who are unable to make
ends meet? Who live on welfare?
African-Americans have been subjected to centuries of racism.
Today, some blame the victims for the problems of our country.
Don't they know that most African-Americans are hardworking, good
citizens? That the tragedy that occurred in Los Angeles, born of
injustice, is just that, a tragedy? That important parts of
American culture-from music to language to literature to
fashion-have been created by African-Americans?
I insist: ""All'' collective judgments are wrong. Only racist
make them. And racism is stupid, just as it is ugly, Its aim is to destroy, to
pervert, to destory innocence in human beings and their
quest for human equality.
Racism is misleading. There are good people and bad people in
ever community. No human race is superior; no religious faith is
inferior. We all come from somewhere, and we all wonder where we
are going.
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The Houston Chronicle, May 24, 1992
I know: You have been tested during your years in school,
more than once. But the real tests are still ahead of you. How will
you deal with your own or other people's hunger, homelessness,
sexual or gender discrimination, and community antagonisms?
The world outside is not waiting to welcome you with open
arms. The economic climate is bad; the psychological one is worse.
You wonder, will you find jobs? Allies? Friends? I pray to our
Father in heaven to answer ""yes'' to all these questions.
But should you encounter temporary disappointments, I also
pray: Do not make someone else pay the price for your pain. Do not
see in someone else a scapegoat for your difficulties. Only a
fanatic does that-not you, for you have learned to reject
fanaticism. You know that fanaticism leads to hatred, and hatred is
both destructive and self-destructive.
I speak to you as a teacher and a student-one is both,
always. I also speak to you as a witness.
I speak to you, for I do not want my past to become your
future.
GRAPHIC: Photos: 1. Elie Wiesel (b/w); 2. Students in a class room (b/w); 3.
Graduates in cap and gown (color, cover); 1. Adams/Sygma, 2. Hodges/West Light,
3. Bob Rashid/Tony Stone Worldwide
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14TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
April 20, 1992, Monday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: TEMPO; Pg. 3; ZONE: C
LENGTH: 709 words
HEADLINE: The heart of Judaism
Elie Wiesel's 'The Forgotten' focuses on the need for memory
BYLINE: By Ron Grossman.
BODY:
Memory, notes author Elie Wiesel, is the most precious and fragile of
mankind's blessings.
Thirty-five years ago, he pledged his literary talents to perpetuating the
memory of those who perished in the Holocaust. Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1986, was the first to use the term "Holocaust" as a synonym for the
destruction of 6 million Jews during World War II.
It was a subject he knew firsthand. Wiesel's first book, = Night, = was his
memoir of coming of age in Auschwitz.
His latest novel, "The Forgotten" (Summit Books), is Wiesel's reflections on
memory's natural enemy. Elhanan Rosenbaum, the book's protagonist, was, like
Wiesel himself, born in Eastern Europe and raised according to the tenets of
Hasidism, Judaism's pietist and mystical wing.
Having survived the Holocaust and established a new, secular life for
himself as a New York psychoanalyst, Rosenbaum finds himself an old man whose
memory is going fast.
In his lucid moments, Rosenbaum is obsessed with belatedly telling his son,
Malkiel, the story of his ancestors' way of life and the tragic end to which
it came during the Nazi era.
Before that, the two generations of Rosenbaums had had a tacit agreement not
to touch the subject. Like other survivors, Elhanan had tried to put that
chapter in his life aside when he left Europe. Malkiel was too busy getting
his professional life established, as a journalist, to think about what it
means to be Jewish.
But watching his father's decline inspires him to make a sentimental voyage,
50 he persuades his editor to give him an assignment that will carry him to his
family's hometown in Romania.
Before he leaves, Malkiel accompanies his father to doctors' offices and
medical laboratories. The senior Rosenbaum is suffering from Alzheimer's
disease, yet the word itself never appears in the book. "It's ineffable, like
the Lord's name," said Wiesel, referring to Judaism's prohibition of uttering
God's name.
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Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1992
Both metaphorically and biologically, Alzheimer's is a deadly threat to all
that is Jewish, said Wiesel, who was in the Chicago area recently to lecture at
a local congregation, as he does every Passover season. Wiesel noted that
Passover is a holiday dedicated to commemorating the escape of the Jews from
slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.
"Memory is at the heart of Judaism," Wiesel explained. "Our holidays remember
our ancestors' defeats as well as their victories."
Wiesel recalled that as a child he lived in a tight-knit religious community
more attuned to ancient Jewish history than to the contemporary world. His
rabbis and teachers knew every verse of the story of Moses and the flight from
Egypt by heart.
Yet even as World War II began, they could only dimly focus on the menace of
Hitler. Even when Jewish refugees fleeing other countries passed through his
hometown, Wiesel's neighbors wouldn't listen to their message: Escape while the
chance exists.
Instead, Wiesel and his fellow Romanian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in
1944, where his mother and sister were sent to their deaths in the crematorium.
Wiesel and his father were chosen for a work detail. Conditions were brutal, but
they grew closer together in the Nazi concentration camp.
"I was a very serious student of Talmudic lore," Wiesel recalled. "My father
was more secular and a businessman. He was always a very busy man, since he also
served as the head of the local Jewish communal organization. So I didn't get to
really know him until we were fighting for our lives in Auschwitz."
Tragically, Wiesel's father lost that battle on the EVE of liberation,
succumbing only a few months before the Soviet army liberated the concentration
camp.
Wiesel made his way to France and, like the hero of "The Forgotten," tried to
put his life back together as if the war hadn't taken place.
"In the camps, I couldn't understand how God could permit what was happening
to us," Wiesel said.
"But as soon as I got out, I went back to strict religious observation."
Later the doubts came: He studied philosophy as a university student, and
since then he has always wrestled with the question of how much of his boyhood
faith he can still believe in. But he has never doubted the need for memory.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Elie Wiesel peers through a glass window at a Torah scroll.
The Holocaust author said that "Our holidays remember our ancestors' defeats as
well as their victories."
TERMS: INTERVIEW; BIORAPHY; BOOK; HISTORY; GERMANY; MURDER; RELIGION; ETHNIC
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30TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1991 The Hartford Courant Company
The Hartford Courant
October 25, 1991, A Edition
SECTION: LIFESTYLES; Pg. B1
LENGTH: 1173 words
HEADLINE: Writer Wiesel ponders God, faith and more immediate questions;
Elie Wiesel's paradox
BYLINE: JOCELYN McCLURG; Courant Book Editor
DATELINE: NEW YORK
BODY:
Elie Wiesel speaks softly, 50 softly that you find yourself straining
toward his words, listening closely.
Many have been moved by Wiesel's words, beginning with It Night, " his memoir
of the Nazi death camps. The Holocaust survivor, spiritual leader and author
received the highest possible accolade in 1986 when he was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. "His message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity," the
committee said in its citation.
Wiesel has won dozens of awards and honorary degrees from all over the
world, and on Nov. 4 he will be in Hartford to receive the Ner Tamid Award from
the Solomon Schechter Day School in West Hartford.
Wiesel, 63, is a small, slight, gentle man with a shock of hair he brushes
back almost tenderly. He sinks into a black leather chair in the office of his
high-rise apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, which is filled with
hundreds of well-ordered books, many of them texts in Hebrew. On the wall behind
his desk is a dark, almost ominous photograph. "The house where I was born," he
says in accented English.
Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, in Romania near
Hungary. When he was 15, the religious boy and his family were rounded up with
thousands of other Jews and deported to Auschwitz. Wiesel survived Auschwitz and
Buchenwald, but he saw his father beaten to death. His mother and one of his
three sisters also perished.
Much of Wiesel's work -- he has written nearly 40 books -- has wrestled with
the paradox of faith, of how God could permit something so unspeakable as the
murder of 6 million Jews. But he has had many other humanitarian causes, among
them a two-decade-long crusade urging greater emigration of Soviet Jews and an
ongoing concern over the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.
The geopolitical landscape has changed radically since Wiesel won the Nobel
Prize -- the Berlin Wall has fallen, Germany has reunified, communism has
collapsed in the Soviet Union and presidents Bush and Gorbachev have pledged to
reduce nuclear arms.
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1991 The Hartford Courant, October 25, 1991
Wiesel, who wrote about his encounter with Jews in the Soviet Union in his
1966 book "The Jews of Silence," was sent to the Soviet Union by French
President Mitterrand with a message of support for Gorbachev during the failed
coup in August. Wiesel says he saw Boris Yeltsin exorting the masses in the
streets and met with Gorbachev when he returned to Moscow from the Crimea.
The collapse of communism came from within the system because it was
"morally weak," Wiesel says. Like Bush, Wiesel would like to see Gorbachev
remain in power, and he credits the Soviet president with promoting glasnost and
perestroika.
"He's a colleague, a Nobel Prize winner, 50 I have to defend him," Wiesel
says with a smile.
But Wiesel says problems remain in Russia, such as a widely expected hungry
winter and strife among the republics. And he is concerned that nuclear weapons
may remain in the hands of republics that could decide to use them against their
neighbors. For that reason he has organized a conference on ethnic hate in
Moscow Dec. 15 to 17 called "The Anatomy of Hate," which will attract world
leaders, intellectuals and journalists and is expected to be opened and closed
by Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
What does he hope to accomplish? "I hope to abolish hate," he says quietly,
smiling. "I want always at least to name, to see, to confront it. To know it's
there, to unmask hatred. Then we can try to disarm it."
Wiesel is also troubled by German reunification and thinks it perhaps
happened "too fast." "There is xenophobia all over Europe, but Germany is one
place where they should know better," he says, referring to neo-Nazi skinheads.
(Wiesel made headlines in 1985 when he urged President Reagan to cancel a trip
to the German cemetery of Bitburg because members of the SS were buried there.
"It was the mistake of his life. He shouldn't have gone," Wiesel says.)
As a Jew, Wiesel says, he is worried about anti-Semitism, "which shockingly
is rising everywhere." And he says that eradicating hunger among children and
nuclear proliferation, especially among terrorists, remain important issues for
him.
Wiesel says he is optimistic about the Middle East peace conference that
opens in Madrid next Wednesday. "After this conference things cannot be the
same. Once they sit together and they look in each other's faces and they talk
to each other and they hear each other, no matter what, it will not be the
same."
Wiesel says he has been asked by television stations and newspapers all over
the world to cover or comment on the peace conference, and says with some
amazement that he could make more money doing that than in a year of teaching at
Boston University. But he says he has declined the offers, because his
commitment to his students is more important.
Wiesel has been a professor of humanities at BU since 1976, and he travels
from his home in New York to teach in Boston. He never teaches the same course
twice.
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1991 The Hartford Courant, October 25, 1991
As a child, Wiesel always wanted to be both a teacher and a writer. In
America he has just published a collection of the famous lectures he has given
for 25 years at the 92nd Street Y in New York. It is called "Sages and Dreamers:
Biblical, Talmudic and Hasidic Portraits and Legends" (Summit, $ 25). In
Wiesel's hands, Noah, Moses and other biblical figures become distinctly human.
"Naturally it's my interpretation. I like to see Moses as a human being.
Poor Moses," Wiesel says in a singsong voice, displaying his storytelling
talents. "He was the greatest leader of all history. Poor Moses! What his people
did to him. They drove him crazy! This man never smiled, never had a good moment
in his life. = In the spring Wiesel's new novel about Alzheimer's disease
called "The Forgotten" will be published, and he is currently working on his
memoirs. They are in two volumes - one chronological, one thematic. The memoirs
are to be published in France next year (Wiesel writes in French) and probably
the United States in 1993.
The memoirs surely will bear further witness to the Holocaust. Wiesel says
he is not concerned that the Holocaust will ever be forgotten, but he dislikes
the "commercialization and trivialization" that have occurred in recent years,
citing TV movies that have been "false, cheap kitsch."
In interviews over the years, Wiesel has said there are no words to describe
the Holocaust, that there is "simply no response." And yet finding the words has
been, in many ways, his life's work.
"I say we cannot, but we must. I don't feel we really can use words because
there are no words. And yet. My favorite expression is 'and yet.' And yet. We
cannot -- and yet. There is no response -- and yet I must find one. The attempt
should be made."
Elie Wiesel will be honored at a cocktail reception and dinner at the
Sheraton-Hartford Hotel on Nov. 4 beginning at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $ 150; $
200 for patrons, and should be reserved by Nov. 1. To do 50 call the Solomon
Schechter Day School at 561-0700.
GRAPHIC: Cecilia Prestamo/The Hartford Courant
Writer Elie Wiesel's works and life have been shaped by his time in the Nazi
death camps.
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PAGE 11
64TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1989 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
June 11, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 2; Page 1, Column 1; Arts and Leisure Desk
LENGTH: 1682 words
HEADLINE: Art and the Holocaust: Trivializing Memory
BYLINE: By ELIE WIESEL; Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz, won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1986.
BODY:
Wittgenstein said it: whereof one cannot speak, one must not speak. The
unspeakable draws its force and its mystery from its own silence. A 19th-century
Hasidic teacher put it his own way: the cry unuttered is the loudest.
If this is true of language as a means of communication in general, it is
even truer of literature and art that try to describe, without ever succeeding,
the final reality of the human condition during the Holocaust. Is proof needed?
It has come in the recent spate of fictionalized accounts of that tragedy in the
mass media.
Let us repeat it once again: Auschwitz is something else, always something
else. It is a universe outside the universe, a creation that exists parallel to
creation. Auschwitz lies on the other side of life and on the other side of
death. There, one lives differently, one walks differently, one dreams
differently. Auschwitz represents the negation and failure of human progress; it
negates the human design and casts doubts on its validity. Then, it defeated
culture; later, it defeated art, because just as no one could imagine Auschwitz
before Auschwitz, no one can now retell Auschwitz after Auschwitz. The truth of
Auschwitz remains hidden in its ashes. Only those who lived it in their flesh
and in their minds can possibly transform their experience into knowledge.
Others, despite their best intentions, can never do 50. Such, then, is the
victory of the executioner: by raising his crimes to a level beyond the
imagining and understanding of men, he planned to deprive his victims of any
hope of sharing their monstrous meaning with others. In the tale of a survivor
that appeared some 20 years ago, an S.S. officer tells a young Jew, ''One day
you will speak of all this, but your story will fall on deaf ears. Some will
mock you, others will try to redeem themselves through you. You will cry out to
the heavens and they will refuse to listen or to believe
You will
possess the truth, but it will be the truth of a madman.
But not even the killers ever imagined that there could come a time when the
merchants of images and the brokers of language would set themselves up to speak
for the victims.
The Holocaust has become a fashionable subject, so film and theater producers
and television networks have set out to exploit it, often in the most vulgar
sense of the word. ' 'The Night Porter, Seven Beauties, the docudrama
'Holocaust,' ''Sophie's Choice, 'War and Remembrance' (I speak of the
film, not the book, which is both shattering and sensitive) Murderers Among
Us, the recent ''Ghetto'' that played on Broadway for several weeks and
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(c) 1989 The New York Times, June 11, 1989
previously, to great acclaim, in Germany - these are only some of the most
familiar examples over the years. An authentic documentary like 'The Final
Solution, by the four-time Oscar winner Arthur Cohn, cannot find a
distributor, but people fall all over themselves for cheap and simplistic
melodramas. They get a little history, a heavy dose of sentimentality and
suspense, a little eroticism, a few daring sex scenes, a dash of theological
rumination about the silence of God and there it is: let kitsch rule in the land
of kitsch, where at the expense of truth, what counts is ratings and facile
success.
Why this determination to show ''everything' in pictures? A word, a glance,
silence itself communicates more and better. How, after all, can one illustrate
famine, terror, the solitude of old people deprived of strength and orphans
robbed of their future? How can one 'stage'' a convoy of uprooted deportees
being sent into the unknown, or the liquidation of thousands and thousands of
men, women and children? How can one ''produce'' the machine-gunned, the gassed,
the mutilated corpses, when the viewer knows that they are all actors, and that
after the filming they will return to the hotel for a well-deserved bath and a
meal? Sure, this is true of all subjects and of all films, but that is also the
point: the Holocaust is not a subject like all the others. It imposes certain
limits. There are techniques that one may not use, even if they are commercially
effective. In order not to betray the dead and humiliate the living, this
particular subject demands a special sensibility, a different approach, a rigor
strengthened by respect and reverence and, above all, faithfulness to memory.
You see, memory is more than isolated events, more even than the sum of those
events. Facts pulled out of their contexts can turn out to be misleading. Take
'Ghetto. The author of this controversial production, Joshua Sobel, of
Israel, insists that the play is based on facts. So what? By isolating certain
facts, by giving them more prominence than so many others, and by illuminating
them from a particular angle, he makes his play lie.
''Ghetto'' is about a theater company in the Vilna ghetto that produced plays
and concerts with the encouragement of Jacob Gens, the chief of the Jewish
police, and the consent of the Germans. The author's intention? To show, on one
hand, the will to live, the thirst for culture among Jews at the very threshold
of death, and on the other, the moral ambiguity of some of their own leaders. It
is a laudable idea, but the play shifts direction in mid-course.
What do spectators remember when they leave the theater? The moral dilemma
that faces Jacob Gens: may one sacrifice some human beings in order to save
others? No. They remember the Jews, most of whom in this play allowed themselves
to be defeated or seduced by the enemy. Bewildering scenes, nauseating in their
individual and collective degradation: orgies, depravity, sadistic
exhibitionism, black-marketeering, prostitution, collaboration. With some
notable exceptions, it is total decadence everywhere, debauchery and mockery at
every level. Gens, a complex person, possesses astonishing dignity and courage,
and yet he crosses over into moments of villany and virtually becomes the Nazis'
accomplice. His policemen become the Nazis' official instruments: it is they who
hound the Jews, they who drive them to their deaths.
Is this a fair and true picture of the ghetto? Filled as it is with ugliness,
decadence and moral abdication, it may be that it reflects a certain reality,
but is that reality not a very limited one? It suffices to read the history of
the Vilna ghetto, or to see a poignant film like ''The Partisans of Vilna,'
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(c) 1989 The New York Times, June 11, 1989
to realize how false and nasty a picture ''Ghetto'' paints for us. The religious
vocabulary has a word for it: 'Hilul hashem' - blasphemy or profanation, an act
that strikes at all that is sacred.
We are, in fact, living through a period of general de-sanctification of the
Holocaust. In West Germany, historians are explaining away Hitler's crimes by
lumping them in with Stalin's; Chancellor Helmut Kohl's official spokesman
recently said that Germans have had enough of feeling guilty and that the Waffen
S.S. of Bitburg were only good German soldiers. In France, a man called Le Pen
considers the Holocaust ''a detail. Anti-Israeli propagandists compare Israeli
soldiers to Nazis, and in France as in the United States, and everywhere else,
for that matter, shameless 'revisionists' go 50 far as to deny the very
existence of the death camps.
As for philosophers and psychiatrists, some of them have long been intrigued
by simplistic theories that attribute to the victim a death wish or a secret
need to dominate, to victimize, to oppress - in other words, to resemble the
executioner. In the course of scholarly colloquia, one sometimes hears more
about the guilt of the victims and the psychological problems of the survivors
than about the crimes of the killers. Didn't an American novelist recently
suggest that the suicide of my friend Primo Levi was nothing but a bout of
depression that good psychoanalytical treatment could have cured? Thus is the
tragedy of a great writer, a man who never ceased to battle the black angel of
Auschwitz, reduced to a banal nervous breakdown.
Who could have imagined it? There are still living survivors, and already
their past has been turned into a kind of no man's land where false certainties
and true arrogance rule. Newcomers to this history appoint themselves experts,
the ignorant become critics. They give the impression of knowing better than the
victims or the survivors how to name what Samuel Beckett called the unnamable,
and how to communicate the uncommunicable. In the field of the audio-visual, the
temptation is generally reductionist: shrinking personalities to stereotypes and
dialogue to cliches. All is trivial and superficial, even death itself: there is
no mystery in its mystery, it is stripped naked, just as the dead are stripped
and exposed to the dubious enjoyment of spectators turned voyeurs.
Why this sudden explosion of nudity as a backdrop for the Holocaust? What by
any rule of decency ought to remain unexposed is exposed to shock the television
viewer. Naked men. Naked women. Naked children. And all of them made up with
ketchup and paid to ''fall'' into the 'mass graves''. How can one explain such
obscenity? How can anyone justify such insensitivity? In the Jewish tradition,
death is a private, intimate matter, and WE are forbidden to transform it into a
spectacle. If that is true for an individual, it is six million times more true
for one of the largest communities of the dead in history.
But then, the ''experts'' will ask, how do we transmit the message? There are
other ways to do it, better ways to keep the memory alive. Today the question is
not what to transmit, but how. Study the texts - such as the diaries of Emanuel
Ringelblum and Chaim Kaplan; the works by the historians Raul Hilberg, Lucy
Davidowicz, Martin Gilbert, Michael Marrus. Watch the documentaries - such as
Alain Resnais's Night and Fog,'' Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah'' and Haim
Gouri's ''81st Blow. Listen to the survivors and respect their wounded
sensibility. Open yourselves to their scarred memory, and mingle your tears with
theirs.
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(c) 1989 The New York Times, June 11, 1989
And stop insulting the dead.
Translated from the French by Iver Peterson.
GRAPHIC: Photo of Auschwitz as it appears today (Ira Nowinski/Museum of Jewish
Heritage, New York) (pg. 38)
SUBJECT: NAZI ERA; MOTION PICTURES; THEATER; TELEVISION; CULTURE
NAME: WIESEL, ELIE
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PAGE 15
73RD STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1988 Newsday, Inc.;
Newsday
November 8, 1988, Tuesday, ALL EDITIONS
Correction Appended
SECTION: PART II; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 683 words
HEADLINE: Wiesel: A Self-Portrait
BYLINE: Leo Seligsohn
KEYWORD: TELEVISION; REVIEW; PORTRAIT OF ELIE WIESEL
BODY:
'A PORTRAIT OF Elie Wiesel, " is really a self-portrait, an autobiographical
snapshot as intricate as it is unadorned. Airing on WNET/13 at 9 p.m. tomorrow
and on WLIW/21 at 1 a.m. Friday, the program is simply Wiesel talking. But it is
the talk of a man fortified by contemplation and buoyed by a poetic vision. The
result is a moving hour of self-revelation, echoing themes expressed in his
books. [CORRECTION-NET/13 will air "A Portrait of Elie Wiesel" at 9 p.m.
tomorrow. The WNET air date reported in yesterday's review was incorrect.
(11/9/88 P 2 NS)
Writer, teacher and one the world's most articulate witnesses to the
Holocaust, Wiesel is shown sitting at a desk in his plain office. There is a
file cabinet next to him. We never see his questioner or hear the questions.
Dressed in a business suit, Wiesel looks almost as though he had been
interrupted while at work. He is pleasant, warm and faintly melancholy.
He speaks intimately of growing up in a Hungarian shtetl named Sighet, of the
horror of Auschwitz, of his release, his years as a journalist and his long
silence before deciding to write about the Holocaust.
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Wiesel talks of his deep ties to
Judaism. He attributes much to his love of a devout grandfather whose occasional
presence loomed large: "He lived only seven kilometers away. But to me it was
across the ocean or across history."
Eloquent about the Holocaust, Wiesel is nevertheless concerned that his role
be misunderstood. "My main theme is not the Holocaust," he says. "I've written
about other subjects. I've written about the Bible and the Talmud in order not
to write about the Holocaust."
He explains his long silence before writing such books as $ Night, = "Jews of
Silence,' "Souls on Fire" and "The Oath."
"One must feel a trembling in one's being before pronouncing certain words
about that era of fire and silence
Of course, it's a presence. The event
will shape future generations. The event has affected the whole world, the whole
cosmos. It was a watershed. There is a before and an after. And after what
happened, the world will never be the same. A kind of mutation had taken
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(c) 1988 Newsday, November 8, 1988
place, almost on the theological level. Everything now is different. Everything
must be seen now in the light or shadow of those flames."
He recalls a time, while he was in a concentration camp, when belief in God
was sorely tested. A group of men "sued" God, he says.
"We put Him on trial, asking why He allowed this to happen. How can one not
ask such questions? How can one not ask such questions today? Today, I
understand that the trial made a profound impression on me. A5 a boy, I couldn't
handle it. For the three scholars, the learned men who called God to judgment,
it ended poorly. They felt God was wrong. But, after they said it, they all
began to pray. To God. Maybe for God."
Rejecting any judgmental role toay, Wiesel says, "I am no authority to judge.
I am only here as a witness."
C OMMENTING ON evil, Wiesel says, "I think the greatest source of evil and
danger in the world is indifference I've always believed that the opposite of
love is not hate but indifference
The opposite of peace is not war but
indifference to peace."
Likewise, he cites indifference as the enemy of art, life, culture beauty
and generosity. "The context is memory. AS long as we remember there is a
chance. If we forget, all that we remember will be forgotten because WE
ourselves will be forgotten."
Appropriate art work and photographs are used throughout as transitions
between various subjects. The only other exception is footage of President
Ronald Reagan presenting Wiesel with the Congressional Gold Medal at the White
House in 1985. Once again, WE hear Wiesel's vain plea that the president not
visit Bitburg cemetery in Germany, which contains the graves of SS men: "That
place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the
SS
11
In effect, the power of "A Portrait of Elie Wiesel" is that it is not about
Wiesel at all but what he stands for: Memory.
GRAPHIC: Newsday Photo by Ari Mintz- Elie Wiesel: 'My main theme is not the
Holocaust, he says on 'Portrait' tomorrow night.
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