Becoming a junkie

The Virginia State Capitol was designed by Thomas Jefferson. This picture was taken before the recent renovations.

Just before Christmas of 1969, WTVR news director Bruce Miller gave me what was to be one of the biggest breaks of my career. "I want you to cover the General Assembly session that starts next month," he said.

"You'll be responsible for everything from the inauguration of the new governor to the end of the session. I'll want a two- or three-minute package for 6 p.m. every night and a separate three- or four-minute package for 7 p.m."

I agreed immediately -- of course! -- but, to be perfectly blunt, the prospect scared the hell out of me.

I'd been out of the country for three years. I had never followed Virginia politics closely. I didn't have a clue about how I'd be able to bring this off. All through the Christmas holidays I worried about it. I also started to read every scrap of news I could find about what might be the big stories at the General Assembly.

I needn't have been quite so anxiety-ridden. Right after the first of the year, John Gilbert threw me a lifeline.

John was the political reporter for WSLS TV, our sister Park Broadcasting station in Roanoke, and he'd been covering Virginia politics for decades. He knew all of the players, from senators, delegates and appointed state officials to lobbyists and the women who operated the snack bar -- known as Chicken's, because that was the nickname of the woman who ran the place. (Some of the most intricate political deals were hammered out in Chicken's, and the women who worked there knew everything worth knowing.)

John would be staying in Richmond for the duration of the session and shipping his film back to Roanoke via bus twice a day.

When the session started, John took me under his wing. Part of me was in awe of the fact that I was covering the oldest legislative body in the New World. John, however, was long past all of that. This was his field of expertise, and he knew as much about how Virginia politics and government worked as any TV reporter in the state.

He was a good teacher. He introduced me to the major players, warned me each day about whether the action would be on the floor of the House or Senate or in a committee room, and he made sure I met the clerks of the House and Senate and all of the state employees who actually made the wheels grind. For the first couple of weeks, I rode his coattails.

And, oh so gradually, I realized I was beginning to understand a bit about Virginia politics.

Filling so much air time on the evening news was hard work. I tried to be everywhere at once and worried constantly that I'd miss something. Every morning I'd read the newspaper to see if the Times-Dispatch reporters -- and there were a handful of them, compared to one of me -- had a story that I'd missed. Thanks to John's guidance and my own growing knowledge, I was rarely surprised by what I read in the paper.

The other Richmond TV stations elected not to have reporters assigned full-time to the Capitol. They'd swoop in for the big stuff, but they weren't in it for the long haul. The legislators knew that, and when they wanted access to television, they came to John and me. (It didn't hurt that WTVR was the dominant station in Richmond.) John had told me that they'd all be watching my nightly reports, and they did. For a young journalist, it was a heady experience. I had thought I'd be sucking up to them, but it was often the other way around: They sucked up to me because I controlled who got facetime on WTVR's evening news.

It was also one of the most exciting periods in my TV news career. We also had some fun times, John and I. Some nights we'd be invited to this or that legislator's hotel room for drinks. We picked up some good stories that way. I also quickly discovered which senators and delegates threw the best parties, and John and I made sure we were there, even though it made for some l-o-n-g days in and around Capitol Square.

Two occasions stand out clearly in my memory of that 1970 General Assembly session. One was how I covered a bill introduced by Henrico's venerable Senator William F. Parkerson. The other was a trip to Tidewater with members of the legislature for the opening of the Hampton Coliseum.

Sen. Parkerson had introduced a measure attempting to define obscenity. I got a copy of his proposal from the clerk's office, read it and interviewed the senator. But I realized that the specificity of the language in the measure meant I couldn't quote much of it on the air: It was fairly blunt in its description of what the senator thought should be judged obscene.

Or ... maybe I could. I got back to the station early enough to arrange a videotape session in the studio. I sat on the news set and read the bill aloud, word for word. Then one of the videotape engineers and I bleeped the soundtrack of the videotape wherever there was a word that we couldn't use on TV. The result was hilarious. We aired that bleeped reading as part of the story that night, and the newsroom roared with laughter.

The next day, I ran into Sen. Parkerson in Chicken's. He caught my eye from across the room and headed my way. Okay, I thought, he's going to chew me out good for making fun of his bill. But that wasn't the case. He had loved it. Thank goodness the senator had a sense of humor. As a result of that caper, he became a valuable source for me.

The opening of the Hampton Coliseum was pure, unadulterated fun. The entire General Assembly, including the reporters who covered it full time, piled onto chartered buses for the trip to Tidewater, where we were treated to a magnificent dinner and then the grand opening performance. Topping the bill was Jack Benny, whose act that night still stands out as the greatest live performance I've ever seen.

As the 1970 General Assembly session drew to a close, I was one very worn out TV reporter. I would cover many more sessions over the years, but that was the one that counted. I had started knowing close to nothing about Virginia politics. I finished with the confidence I needed: I knew that I could do this job. And I enjoyed it immensely. No longer was I a political neophyte. Now I was something I never expected to be. I was a political junkie. And I still am to this day.

John Gilbert is no longer alive. But I owe him a debt of gratitude that mere words can't express.