* * *
I first met and had the opportunity to share a microphone with Gerald Ford when he was a congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I had moved for my second job. He was always approachable and friendly to the media, and was most accommodating the night I asked him to join me at radio station WOOD to provide analysis during our coverage of the gubernatorial election, in which George Romney won his first of three terms. Ford was an effective legislator, and was well liked by Democrats as well as Republicans. It was easy to understand how he comfortably transitioned into the Oval Office after President Nixon’s resignation. Despite Ford’s affability, though, his popularity dropped after he pardoned Nixon over the Watergate scandal, and voters replaced him with Jimmy Carter in 1976.
In subsequent years, Ford would grant me interviews whenever I saw him at political conventions. It was at a charity benefit, years later, when I greeted him on the dais where he was sitting next to iconic comedian Bob Hope. He was pleased to see me again, and to learn that I was now a television anchorman in New York. His eyes widened and a smile crossed his lips as he nudged Hope, boasting about how a kid who began his news career in Grand Rapids had made it to the big time. He seemed genuinely proud.
* * *
My impression of Jimmy Carter was that he was a sensitive, religious man who wanted to be liked. Ultimately, he failed to exert the leadership and support he needed to be an effective president; he didn’t seem to have the stomach for politics, and by his own admission he wasn’t enough of a horse-trader to succeed at the job. I covered the Carter White House in the summer of 1980, and my best memories of those years were the barbecue parties Carter held on the back lawn for staff and reporters. The big story in the final days of his presidency was the effort to gain the release of 52 American hostages being held by Iran, and I was also at the White House during those tense hours before a deal was finally struck and the hostages were freed—the day Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter.
I had the opportunity for three one-on-one interviews with Carter, two of them when he came to the studio to promote his books. They were good interviews, but contained nothing dramatically revealing. Carter was personally quite affable and easy to talk with; there didn’t seem to be anything pretentious about him. And he graciously greeted my 10-year-old son Steven and 7-year-old daughter Jill, whom I allowed to play hooky from school one day to meet the former president and take a picture with him.
* * *
George H. W. Bush was President Reagan’s vice president and was seeking reelection when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention in Dallas in 1984. We talked about the upcoming race with Walter Mondale, and how he expected the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro as the nation’s first female vice-presidential candidate would impact the race. It was quite evident that Bush had his own agenda with the message points he wanted to get across, regardless of what I asked him. But even with his prepared messages, I managed to get in some hard news questions.
He seemed very studied at times, and quite methodical—like when he turned away from me to look directly into the camera while stressing a point. As someone who had taught media techniques to corporate executives, I immediately recognized what he was doing. After the interview, he thanked me for it, and as I complimented him on his handling of it, I couldn’t help but ask if he had recently undergone media coaching.
“Yes,” he responded with an uneasy laugh. “Was it that obvious?” I explained that I had done that sort of training myself, so to me it was obvious.
“Any suggestions?” he asked. I suggested that he try to sound less programmed, and make that turn to the camera less obvious. He expressed his gratitude for the guidance “from a pro,” and as I left, he gave me a small penknife and a pen bearing the vice-presidential seal as a token of his appreciation.
* * *
President Bill Clinton had to have taken a page out of the JFK handbook. He is charisma personified: he has the uncanny ability to look you in the eye and make you feel that you are the only person in the room. I have watched him work crowds, and it’s amazing the way he connects with each individual he meets. After the Monica Lewinsky episode, my wife thought Clinton was a scoundrel—until she met him and became silly putty. With hundreds of others in the room, Clinton held Lorri’s hand for a moment, looked her in the eye, then looked over toward me and asked her, “Is he behaving himself?” Look who’s asking!
56
THE PHOTO THAT BROUGHT A FAMILY TOGETHER
Photo I took as a teenager that inspired my career.
More than 50 years had passed since I had taken a photo of a raging fire in the Bronx when I received an email from a viewer requesting a copy of the picture. He saw it in a book in which I had written a chapter about the Bronx. Donald Mahoney said he was making the request because he recognized his late firefighter father in the photo, the only picture he had ever seen of him in his 37 years on the job.
With regret I responded that I had misplaced the negative, and did not have a print copy. However, I promised that I would save the email and reach out to Mahoney if I ever located the negative.
Five years later, in 2011, while combing through my old photo files, I finally located the negative. It brought back vivid memories of the night I took the picture. I was 15 years old and watching The Steve Allen Show at 11:30 p.m. when I heard fire engines whizzing by. I looked out the window; flames from a nearby catering hall had turned night into day. I grabbed my Rolleiflex, headed out and started shooting pictures before firefighters had even deployed their hoses. One of the pictures was a great shot of flames mushrooming from almost a dozen windows of the unoccupied catering hall.
It was that fire, and being first on the scene, that sparked my interest in a career in journalism. When I returned to my apartment building, my neighbors clustered around me to hear what I knew about the fire. You could say that was my first “newscast.” Subsequently, I was thrilled when the New York Daily News bought my photograph, paid me $25 and gave me my first credit line under the photo. I was hooked! Coincidentally, it was 26 years later that I returned to the same building where I sold that photograph, to become an anchor and reporter at WPIX-TV.
With the newly found negative, I had an enlarged photo printed and framed, and alerted Don Mahoney that I had a surprise for him—the photo he thought he would never get. We arranged to meet at the Friars Club, where Don brought along his brothers, Michael and John. They marveled at the photo, and indeed recognized their father, James Mahoney, in the picture.
“It’s his frame, the way he stood,” John observed. “We couldn’t see his face clearly,” noted Don, “but we recognized that little white spot.” He pointed to the ankles of the man in the photo. “He used to wear white socks, and you can see it in the picture.” His brothers agreed that this was the confirmation they needed.
James Mahoney died 25 years earlier, and seeing his picture was an emotional experience for the brothers.
“He was a honey bear,” Michael said. “He wasn’t tall, but he was big.”
“There was something about him,” Donald added, remembering that his father had helped him to overcome a case of bulbar polio that afflicted his left shoulder. “Whenever you were with him, you felt very safe.” John nodded in agreement. “You knew everything was going to be okay,” he said. “The guys who worked with him said they would watch him to see what to do at a fire—they knew he knew what to do.”
Bringing the brothers this experience, so many years later, was so gratifying for me. It was truly touching, watching them studying and reflecting on my photo of their father. It helped them to remember him, and share fond memories of their life together. “This means the world to us,” Donald told me. “This is the only picture we have of our father fighting a fire, and you kept a promise you made to someone you didn’t know, five years ago—that says something.”
57
NICE TO MEET YOU
As reporters appearing on daily news broadcasts, we become
familiar faces in the city, and are often greeted by viewers who recognize us. Sometimes that recognition comes from unexpected places. Once, for instance, Stevie Wonder sat down with me for a brief interview after performing a concert in Central Park. We greeted one another, and I had barely spoken a sentence when the multiple Grammy Award–winning musical genius, who has been sightless since birth, paused for a moment and said, “I know that voice from television—nice to meet you.” That was a kick, getting recognized by Stevie Wonder.
Equally surprising was the time I was approached by a homeless man on a cold February night. I thought he was looking for a handout as he stretched out his hand, but then he said he wanted to shake mine.
“I’ve been watching you every night on the news,” he said excitedly. You really can’t make assumptions about people, and I didn’t want to be rude, but curiosity got the better of me as I looked at this man, standing beside the corrugated-cardboard box that was his home. I couldn’t help but ask him how exactly he got to watch me out here in the cold street. He excused himself for a moment, reached into his cardboard house and pulled out a 10-inch black-and-white battery-operated television! Only in New York, my friends—only in New York.
INDEX
NOTES: Page numbers in italics indicate a photograph.
A
Adelis, James, Jr., 152
Adler, Stanley, 51
African Americans
Carter, Hurricane, 262–64
racial hatred and violence in the South, 105–7, 108–9, 110–11
Scott fakes prejudice to use the phone, 105–6
tax driver cries about King’s death, 112 See also King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Agnew, Spiro, 178
aircraft
Concorde Supersonic airliner, 274–75
Pan Am 103 bombing, 170–71
passenger plane overshoots runway,
Charleston, West Virginia, 257–58
TWA 800 crash over the Atlantic Ocean, 171–73
TWA Flight 847 hostage claimed by The Today Show producer, 256
United Airlines and TWA flights in collision over New York City, 81–84
Walsh’s first flight in his life, extradition from Oregon to New Jersey, 18–19 See also space program
Air Force Hospital, Camp Anaconda, Iraq, 154–55, 159
airliners collide over New York City, 81–84
A is for anticipating (CLASP interview technique), 205
alcohol forbidden to Iraq War soldiers, 153–54
Aldrin, Buzz, 76
Ali, Muhammad, and Hurricane Carter, 262–63
Ali–Holmes heavyweight championship fight, Las Vegas, Nevada, 230
Allison, Dorothy, 51–52
Amadeus (film), 252
Amityville haunted house
debunking the story, 30–31
DeFeo as murderer, 28–29
DeFeo as Scott’s pen pal, 29–30, 276, 278–79
Lutz family’s supernatural experiences, 26, 29–30
murders in, 25–26, 28–29
Scott’s assignment, 25
séances, 25, 26–27, 29
Amityville Horror, The (Anson), 26
“Angel of the Evening” (housewife from Kentucky), 255
Apollo space program, 73–76
Arafat, Yasser, 141, 142, 144–46
Aranio, Frank (hit man), 48–49
Armstrong, Neil, 76
Arnold, Eve, 22
Artis, John, 262–63
assassination of John F. Kennedy, 10, 85–89
astronauts, 72, 73–75, 76, 80
Atlanta, Georgia, “Negro” taxi driver crying about MLK assassination, 112
B
Baghdad, Iraq
flying over in a helicopter, 155–56, 157–58
Hussein’s palaces, 157–58
Memorial Park, xii
Baird, Antonio, 153
Baltz, Stephen, 83, 84
bank erroneously gives man $100,000 in 1978. See Walsh, Charlie
bank exposed by Miller as landlord of swank brothel, 196
Banner, Lois, 22, 24
Barbee, Tai, 160
Basto, Frank “The Bear,” 269
“Battle of Hotels,” Beirut, Lebanon, 142
Beatles, the, 96
arriving in the United States, 96–98
concerts, 99, 102–3
The Ed Sullivan Show, 98–99
Lennon’s murder, 100–102
mob hysteria, 96, 97–98
success of, 99–100
Beirut, Lebanon, 141–42, 143–44
Bell X-1 test plane and Yeager, 213–14
Bentley, Helen, 178
Bergman, Jules, 72
Berkowitz, David “Son of Sam,” 276–78
Bernstein, Sid, 99
Bessie Brewer’s boarding house, Memphis, Tennessee, 110
Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart, 99
Binghamton ferryboat, 174, 174–75, 176
bin Laden, Osama
death of, 166–68
Miller’s exclusive interview, 198
blacks. See African Americans Bloc, Ray, 99
Bloomberg, Michael, 215, 217–18
boxing, Brinkley and, 229–32
“box-topping” ferryboats for vessel exchange program, 175–76
Bratton, William “Bill,” 198, 199
Brinkley, Christie, 229, 229–32
Burton, Richard, 235
Bush, George H. W., 283–84
bystanders, challenges with, 200, 200–202
C
Calumet City, Illinois, 47
Calzadilla, John, 53, 54
Calzadilla, Michael, 53–54
Cambodia, 133
Khmer Rouge, 134, 135, 140
Killing Fields, 140
opium den, 138–40
Phnom Penh, 134–35
Pol Pot’s war crimes exposed, 140
trip to the front, 135–38
Camp Anaconda, Balad, Iraq, 152–55, 159
cancer
DiMaggio, lung cancer, 169–70
filming documentary about, in a graveyard, 265
man whose bank gave him $100,000, 11–12
Cape Canaveral, Florida, 71. See also space program
Carey, Bill, 167
Carey, Hugh, 185–86
Carmichael, Stokely, 105, 107
Carnegie Hall, New York City, the Beatles at, 99
Carroll, Stephen, 50
Carter, Jimmy, 282–83
Carter, Rubin “Hurricane,” 262–64
Cats (Broadway musical), 236–37
Chaffee, Martha, 75
Chaffee, Roger, 73–75
Chapman, Mark David, 100, 103
Charleston, West Virginia, 257–58
Christmas blizzard of 2010, 201
Christmas for our troops
overview, 151, 151–52, 159
Camp Anaconda, Balad, Iraq, 152–55, 159
flying over Baghdad in a helicopter, 155–56, 157–58
gratitude from soldiers and their families, 160–61
soldiers hosting a party for Iraqi children, 158
soldiers talking with loved ones at home, 159–60
traveling in a Rhino from Camp Victory to the Green Zone, 156–57
C is for caring (CLASP interview technique), 205
CLASP interview technique, 205–6 Cleopatra (film), 235
Clinton, Bill, 284
Clinton, Hillary, 168
Coliseum, Washington, D.C., the Beatles at, 99
Collado, Stephanie, 32, 32–35
Collins, Mike, 76
Columbia, Space Shuttle, 77–79
Commodore Hotel, Beirut, Lebanon, 144
Concorde Supersonic airliner, 274–75
Countess, Robert, 238, 239–40
Crandall, Kathy, 61, 62
Crandall, Peter, 61–63
Crazy Love (HBO documentary), 7
criminal justice system
and Carter, Rubin “Hurricane,” 262–64
; innocent people sent to prison, 65–67
police alter and add evidence to make their case, 44–45, 48–52
criminals
Aranio, Frank, 48–49
Basto, Frank “The Bear,” 269
Berkowitz, David “Son of Sam,” 276–78
Chapman, Mark David, 100, 103
Crandall, Kathy, 61, 62
DeFeo, Ronald, Jr., 28, 29, 30, 276, 278–79
Dog Day, 226, 226–28
Jelicks, James, 188–91
kidnapping of John Calzadilla, 53–55
Laning, Kent, 58–61
Mocco, Peter, 260
Potter, Charlie, 63–64
Pugach, Burt, 3, 3–7
Riis/Pugach, Linda, 3, 3–7 See also Walsh, Charlie
Cronkite, Walter, 219
interview of, 219–22
at Kennedy Space Center, 72, 73
Cupid, Marvin Scott as, 6
D
Damn Yankees (Broadway musical), 210
death penalty, 4, 65–67
DeBakey, Michael, 210
DeFeo, Ronald, Jr., 28, 29, 30, 276, 278–79
Democratic primary, 1960, 8–10
DiMaggio, Joe, 169–70
Dock, Willie, 92 Dog Day Afternoon (film), 227
Dog Day (John Wojtowicz), 226, 226–28
Duran–Leonard boxing match, New Orleans,
Louisiana, 231
Dylan, Bob, 262
E
Eddie: My Life, My Loves (Fisher), 234
Ed Sullivan Show and the Beatles, 98–99
Egypt
six-day war with Israel, 127–28
Suez area during War of Attrition, 128–32
Eisenhower, Dwight David, 280–81
exclusive stories
overview, 165–66
bin Laden’s death, 166–68
DiMaggio in hospital with lung cancer, 169–70
Gillibrand nomination for Clinton’s Senate seat, 168–69
Jackie O says “yes,” 267–68
Libya offers $10 million to families of Pan Am 103 bombing, 170–71
Mocco’s alleged criminal conflict of interest, 260
Quinn murder suspect apprehended, 194
Saudi Arabia’s loan to United States, 169
Scott arrested at “massage parlor” he’s investigating, 273
source anonymity, 168, 171–72
As I Saw It Page 25