Mining memories

Here goes part two of my series on memories.

A few days ago I wrote about joy and of my belief that it's more prevalent in memories than in real life -- simply because joy is so rare in real life.

Memories of another kind assaulted me during this past week. This time, the memories I'm talking about are things of great ... moment, like the Watergate scandal, Nixon's impeachment and resignation, Civil Rights, Women's rights, and Southern prejudice.

One of my colleagues from WTVR TV News from the 1970s emailed me the other day. She's working on a book, and she wanted to tap my memories.

I was a new news director in the early 1970s and was building a staff. The station's and my goals converged when it was time to hire a new reporter. We had no on-air black news people. We were also woefully short on women.

I decided to hire a black woman. Months later, I picked her to be the co-anchor, with a white man, of the 30-minute noon newscast, which drew something like 70 percent of the people watching TV. It was a ratings powerhouse, sandwiched between, if memory serves me, a top-rated game show and the mother of all soap operas.

I was proud of hiring her. She was direct, honest, objective, appealing on camera, intelligent, a quick thinker and a good writer. She also was not above calling me out when leftover traces of Southern prejudice or disrespect showed through in any aspect of the news operation.

She also carried a heavy burden. She was a pioneer, a trailblazer, in Richmond television.

When she told me recently of some of the overt prejudice she recalls, it shocked me. Did I never know? Or was I just not invested enough to remember? In a recent email, she quoted bits of advice I had given her at the time. Forty years later, I read what she says I said, and I suppose I advised her well enough. But I don't remember saying those things.

What I remember most is her perspective on a city that I thought I knew inside and out. She taught me about culture, attitudes, politics. I remember conversations about authors, politicians, music and heroes. She broadened my world. She moved on to anchoring in several major national markets before leaving the business a couple of decades later.

She was on the air on Channel 6 for stories that only she and I remember and for stories the whole nation remembers. She could do a good feature story that made your heart melt. And she could keep the noon newscast on the air with few resources other than her own wits while awaiting network coverage of Richard Nixon's farewell address to his White House staff. (He was late.) With a little help from me running copy up and down the stairs, she kept the newscast moving professionally. I'll take her word for it: I have no memory of her marathon ad-lib or of my running up and down the stairs.

I don't doubt that any of it happened. I just don't remember those incidents.

This business, yet to come, of getting together and exploring our no-doubt distinctly different memories of a brief, key period in our lives as journalists will prove to be interesting and probably challenging. Two people. Two perspectives. Two selective memories of events from nearly 40 years ago.

We'll be meeting up next month. I'm looking forward to it.