by Dana Perino
My sister and I were the first granddaughters born to the family. My dad took that seriously. He told us from an early age that we could grow up to be whatever we wanted. He had given me a yellow T-shirt that had big black block letters that read, ANYTHING BOYS CAN DO GIRLS CAN DO BETTER. I wore the heck out of that shirt—it shows up year after year in family photo albums. The early power of feminist marketing worked (though it was quite a hideous design).
My sister and I would walk to elementary school until the fourth grade. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Rittenbaum, was a genius. She pushed us to read by holding contests and to be better people with a weekly citizenship award.
Mrs. Rittenbaum also used to take us on trips around the world, but only in our imaginations. She had us set up our chairs like we were on an airplane and then she would read to us about where we were going that day. When we “arrived,” the class got to eat snacks from that country. One time we went to Madagascar and she served pomegranates. I asked my mom to buy some at the store for us, and then my sister and I made a big mess as we tried to figure out how to eat them. Now they come in liquified form.
I was a well-behaved kid—most of the time. But one memory still stings. In the third grade one of my classmates asked if she could copy from my spelling test. I was nervous but agreed. Hours later I got called up to the teacher’s desk.
“Dana, why did you turn in two spelling tests?” she asked.
What I hadn’t realized was that the girl didn’t just copy down the vocabulary words, but my entire paper—including putting my name up top where hers should have been. I got in as much trouble as the cheater.
While my K–third grade experience was wonderful, my fourth grade year was terrible. Denver started busing kids into different neighborhoods to integrate the schools. I had a 45-minute ride in the morning and was one of five white students in the entire fourth grade. It was a confusing mess of trying to fit in but being bullied and unable to figure out a way to manage it. Even the bus drivers used to call me the “little white princess” and would ridicule me in front of the other kids, warning me about what would happen if I told my dad about it. I held my tongue and worried a lot. I tried not to tattle or complain.
I spent hours praying over and over again, “Please don’t let them be mad at me, please don’t let them be mad at me,” because my classmates were really tough on me. They were often mean, picking on me during recess then asking me to help them with their homework—which felt like a threat, because if I didn’t help them, I’d pay for it later. So I started offering to do their assignments or let them cheat off my tests just to keep on their good side. I always worried that someone was going to be angry, and to this day, I brace myself for someone’s bad mood until I see that I’m not in trouble with him or her for anything. The President knew this about me, and if he asked his aide to call me over to the Oval Office, he’d say, “And tell her it’s nothing bad.” Today, Bill Shine of Fox News does the same. Good managers know how to read their people and to keep them from being paralyzed with fear, even if the initial event was over thirty years ago.
Around that time, I started picking up on subtleties of communications between people. I was sensitive to tension, and I really disliked conflict of any kind. My parents argued just like any other parents, and they eventually divorced when I was twenty-eight years old.
Their arguments used to unnerve me—I shrank from conflict anywhere I could because my school situation was so bad and I was constantly tense. If there was fighting at home, I held my breath. I’d listen for things that might cause irritation and start a fight. I remember thinking, “Why didn’t he say it this way, then she wouldn’t have thought he meant that…” or “I wish she would have said this instead of that and then he wouldn’t be mad.”
That kind of message manipulation is something I’ve practiced the rest of my life in so many situations. In my personal life, I’m always telling Peter how he should have said something so that I would feel x or y (yeah, I know, poor guy). I choose my words carefully, and regret it if I get it wrong. I counsel friends on how to break up with boyfriends or quit a job, and later I’d tell the President what he should say to the world. One day when I corrected Brian Kilmeade about something he said on air on Fox News, he asked, “Do you have to be everyone’s press secretary?” And I said, “Yes. I can’t help it!”
Out of this anxiety and a need to keep things even and steady came my talents to size up a situation and immediately think of the right thing to say at the right time. Part of that was instinct, but the other part was deciding that I had to be the person who had the most information. That gave me control and I could show two parties why they should get along because they had the same goals—and I had facts to back it up. Being on The Five has meant giving up some of that control, but as my co-hosts will attest, I sometimes try to shape their answers by sending articles that may affect their views. I like to know what I’m getting myself into.
My school problem got resolved when my parents pulled out of the city and moved to Parker, Colorado, in the outer Denver suburbs. We had five acres, a three-bedroom ranch house, and a view of the Rocky Mountain Front Range. I caught up quickly at school and made a lot of friends. It was starkly different from my previous two years, and probably made all the difference for me. My experience is the basis for my support for school choice programs—my parents had the means to move to a better school, but other parents don’t necessarily have the resources to relocate and so their options are limited by outdated laws.
Moving out to the far suburbs came with a lot of upsides, but my mom and dad had long commutes, and my sister and I were often home alone in the afternoon. As you can imagine, the first thing I did every day after school was… my homework.
My sister, Angie, is four years younger than me and has spent her life in Colorado. I think she was my parents’ favorite, and that was okay with me. She was my favorite, too. Angie was the definition of a second child. She rarely got punished and often got her own way, except when she poured her cereal milk on her head right before we needed to leave and my mom made her go to school like that. The milk got crunchy in her hair throughout the day and smelled terrible. But the punishment worked—she never did that again.
I wish I’d been a better older sister. I teased Angie by pretending to melt her blanket in the dryer and by confusing her on the difference between Velma and Daphne on Scooby-Doo. She loved Cabbage Patch dolls, and I felt sorry for her when my mom was furious that Angie had painted freckles on such an expensive toy. I should have stopped her. But even when she got in trouble, my sister didn’t complain. She didn’t mind getting sent to her room—she loved her room!
We didn’t fight any more than other siblings, and we were actually pretty close. When my parents got ready for a rare night out, we used to watch them practice their country swing and two-step in the living room. Then we’d set our alarm for 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday so that we wouldn’t miss The Smurfs.
When I was older, my parents got me a car so that I could help them with shuttling Angie back and forth for her allergy shots. Sometimes after her appointments, I’d take her to see my friends so that she could hang out “with the cool people.”
My sister is great in a crisis. She goes into “how can I help” mode. When her good friend died from a drug overdose, she put together a memorable slideshow and paired it with his favorite music for the funeral. When her friend, a mother of two young kids, was in the hospital and close to death, Angie took the kids to McDonald’s at 5 a.m. and let them order whatever they wanted. Then she gave them her phone number and said they could text whenever they wanted—and did they ever. She always wrote them back.
And whether there’s a tragedy or a celebration, she goes to work in the kitchen and makes homemade chicken noodle soup, beef brisket, lasagna, enchiladas, and her favorite—blueberry bread. It is amazing (and a little unfair) that she’s so thin!
Angie also was the classic little sister. She really thought I was
the smartest and the coolest; and interesting to me, over the years she never seemed envious of any of my successes. She loved President Bush, too, and on her desk at work in Denver she had a photograph of her visit to Air Force One. One day when her computer was acting up, she called the IT department. Ben Machock came to fix her problem and spotted the picture. They’d both felt a spark—love can hit you at any time—and he asked if the photo was real. She said it was. A few years later, they got married.
Angie is the kind of person I wish I could be. Rarely have I met someone who could be that genuinely happy for someone else, but Angie is like that. I try to remember to be more like her.
Junior high was the confusing mess for me that it is for a lot of early teens. I was kind of in the popular kids group but didn’t always fit in. I wanted to succeed and ran for student council, made the cheerleading team, and worked on the yearbook staff.
Academically I was an honor student, but that’s when I started doing better in English than in math. I loved my literature courses and even enjoyed diagramming sentences. I was clever enough to avoid having to take higher-level math to keep up my grade point average, but I wish the school hadn’t let me get away with that.
I had crushes on boys who I know consumed my thoughts, but for the life of me I can’t remember many of their names. I recall once when I was thirteen, my mom and dad were at work in the summertime and they told me, “Whatever you do, don’t go on those three-wheelers with those boys.” I hadn’t intended to, but that afternoon a bunch of my friends came over and one had his ATV. He asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I didn’t want them to think I was a chicken, so I said we could just go down to the cul-de-sac and back.
I had a bad feeling, and I should have listened to my instincts and declined the offer of a ride. He told me to hop on the back and hold on, but I didn’t want him to think I liked him, so I didn’t grip his sides. When he turned right at the end of our driveway, I fell off the back and the big tire ran over my ankle, breaking it and my big toe. I had gravel rash up my calf muscle. My mom had to rush home from work and take me to the doctor. She didn’t have to say anything—I learned my lesson. From then on, I didn’t go on the three-wheelers, and as an adult, I always hold on.
High school was better. I had a great range of friends—from the speech team to the football players and cheerleaders. Our parents were suburban moms and dads—some worked in offices in the city and others had successful small businesses like Hoff’s Landscape Contractors, which my friend runs today. The father of one of our buddies was our principal, so we kept in line but we tucked in behind him when we tried to get away with something. We had a lot of freedom—perhaps more than we should have—but we also grew up at a peaceful time in a semi-rural area so that cushioned us from harsher realities.
I had some nerd-like tendencies—with one friend I only spoke in haiku. I rarely was in trouble, except once when I tried to play hooky with Tracy Schilling and got caught and had to do detention. I thought my parents had no idea, but come that Christmas one of my presents was a framed detention notice that my mother had received. They knew how to punish me—I was so embarrassed that I didn’t think it was funny.
Okay, I was a little like Tracy Flick in the movie Election. I was student body president, and during the Perino administration, I was successful in getting some flexibility into the weekly schedule for extra tutoring and studying (and an extra forty-five minutes of downtime for those not inclined to study—so I had support from everyone). I helped arrange the dances, including the prom. But my great love was the speech team. Those were my people. I think about them now when I’m on The Five and just know they probably all watch Red Eye (that’s a compliment).
When it came to choosing a college, I wanted to go to a big school and have big fun, but my dad suggested a smaller school with a chance of a scholarship. I didn’t even want to think about it, but he insisted and I pouted the whole drive to Pueblo, Colorado, to visit the University of Southern Colorado. A small, dinky school wasn’t what I had in mind for my first time living away from home. This wasn’t in my plans!
But Father knew best. After I met several professors, I realized it was the place for me. I wouldn’t be lost in a crowd, and I’d have a chance to work at the public television station for southern and western Colorado, the kind of hands-on experience that would help me get a job. Each of the professors in the mass communications department had to have ten years of practice before they could teach—I didn’t know how special that was until I learned more about academia. I also received a four-year tuition scholarship for joining the speech team. So it ended up being quite a good deal.
I loved all of my mass communications classes, especially History of Journalism, Ethics, and Public Relations 101. I did well in other subjects, too. I minored in Spanish and even started dreaming in the language. I liked politics, and years later one of my professors, Pauletta Otis, also worked in the Bush Administration at the Pentagon.
I took Philosophy 101 my freshman year, and when I came home for Thanksgiving, I told my dad I was thinking about becoming a Buddhist. That didn’t go over very well, but it was a passing fancy—by Christmas I was happily back in the pews at our Lutheran church. That was a great thing about the college—thinking about new ideas and deciding what worked for me.
At the university, I worked on Standoff, which was a debate program—kind of an early version of The Five. In my senior year at college, I had a weekly show called Capitol Journal, which was a show that provided a weekly roundup of the legislative issues affecting southern and western Colorado. I must have been terrible, but at least they gave me a shot. I also worked as an overnight country music DJ on the weekends and as a waitress in any spare time I could find. I graduated with honors, and as soon as the ceremony was over, I was ready to move on.
Just like in high school, my best college friends were on the speech team, but I knew lots of people. I got a kick out of one girl who came from New England—she’d actually believed a brochure that told her our university was near the ski slopes. She was a character who smoked cigarettes on the windowsill of her dorm room and never worried about getting in trouble—I wrote a few papers for her for $20 each (I really should have charged more).
I had a couple of boyfriends in college, one more serious than the other. The first was a basketball player. He was the point guard, so there wasn’t much of a height disparity. We dated steadily for a couple of years. I really thought he might be the guy I’d be with for my life—he was cute, funny, and not as dumb as you’d think (but close).
One night when he was supposed to come pick me up, he never showed. He dumped me by never showing up or even calling again. I came down with broken heart flu. I felt sad, betrayed, and foolish. My roommate, Andrea Aragon, saved me. She got me up and walking around and eventually out on Saturday nights to the country and Western bars, where we’d dance with a few fellas and go home alone. We still agree, “Thank God he broke my heart.”
I chose graduate school right after college, another small school but this one was far from Colorado, at the University of Illinois Springfield. It was an exclusive program—only eighteen people a year got into the public affairs reporting program. The best part was that it was only a one-year commitment. I was anxious to get a job in the news business, but I thought a master’s degree would give me a competitive edge.
I scored an internship with a local CBS affiliate. I thought I’d love it, and in some ways I did. I liked learning about legislation and putting together video packages that explained a complicated issue. But it was 1995, the first time in decades that Republicans were in power, and the people I worked with didn’t seem to have much regard for them. I picked up on their hostility to any conservative idea, and I thought it was out of line and unfair. It was my first taste of media bias, and it turned me off of wanting to work in local news. I graduated with honors and hightailed it back to Denver to do what all graduate students seem to do—I lived in my parents’ bas
ement and started waiting tables.
In the mornings, I’d call a media hotline that listed the local market TV jobs, and I applied for a few in the Southwest because I thought my Spanish skills would come in handy there. I also thought maybe the people out West wouldn’t be so biased (I was mostly wrong).
One job was in Guam—a TV anchor on a U.S. military base. I applied thinking it would be quite an experience. As fate would have it, that night my dad and I were flipping through the channels and we saw part of a documentary about the brown tree snake infestation in Guam. People found them in their bathtubs, their toilets, and their washing machines. One lady talked about how she was just walking along and a brown tree snake fell on her head. So much for Guam. I withdrew my application, which may have been a bit rash. I regret not being adventurous enough to take that job.
While I was waiting tables, I found out about a deputy press secretary job in the Colorado State Senate. I wanted to have a good reference, so I called the chief of staff to U.S. Representative Scott McInnis (R-CO). McInnis had been willing to do interviews with me every week for that PBS show when I was in college. Looking back, I realize most politicians wouldn’t have given me the time of day, but he was kind. And keeping in contact with his office was my first professional experience of building a good network because you never know when you might need someone’s help.
The Congressman’s chief of staff offered me a job instead of a reference. I thought they meant in his Pueblo, Colorado, office, so I backpedaled. But the job they needed me to do was in Washington. That got my attention, though I worried that if I didn’t take a job in TV right away, I’d miss my chance to work as a journalist. And I’d just taken out a student loan to pay for my graduate degree—was all that money down the drain?