by Byron Pitts
Manny spoke to her in Spanish and asked her permission to videotape her preparation for dinner and the children sitting down to eat. She smiled and nodded yes. But then she did something that surprised us all. “Por favor [please],” she said in Spanish, “eat with us.” She invited us to sit down with her family for dinner. Actually, she insisted. In a translated back and forth, we begged for them to eat without us. We were four healthy grown men who twenty-four hours earlier had slept in a hotel and had had three hot meals. Besides that, in about a week we would be back in our comfortable homes and comfortable lives.
Larry tried to seize control. “Let’s go,” he said, and the four of us backed up. “No! No! No!” she shot back as she moved to block our way. Wearing a worn apron around her waist, she used the edges to dust off the small table. She waved for her children to make room. With gap-toothed smiles and their almond-shaped eyes focused on us, they moved their small stools closer together to make room for their guests. Larry, Manny, Craig, and I all had tears in our eyes. I knew Larry was easy to tear up. Manny is passionate about most things, but Craig isn’t. He was always the coolest member of our team. But the moment had even gotten to him. “Damn,” Craig muttered under his breath. “I thought these things weren’t supposed to get to us,” as he wiped his eyes. This family had as close to nothing as almost any family you could imagine, and they desperately wanted to share. We were the American journalists who had come to this faraway place to tell the world of a horrific natural disaster and perhaps in some way help families like the Lopezes. And this poor woman with not even enough to properly feed herself and her children was offering to share with us. Finally, she relented and the family began to eat, a fistful of rice apiece. The gesture alone left our whole team emotionally spent for the rest of the day. We tried offering her some of our bottled water and some supplies, but she declined, though Manny did convince her to take our empty plastic water bottles so she could use them later to transport water back to her children. There must be a place reserved in heaven for people like Vicenta Lopez.
It’s been my great joy to meet people with Vicenta’s same spirit right here at home in the United States.
THE NOTHING STORM
Some of the most remarkable things I have witnessed occurred in what some might describe as less than memorable or significant occasions. I guess it is all about perspective.
Meaux, Louisiana, is a spit of a town along the Louisiana coast. It is a speck on the map twenty miles southwest of Lafayette. In fact, you likely will not find it on most maps. It’s like my mother’s hometown of Friendship, North Carolina. You normally go there for one of two reasons. Either you are visiting family or you’re lost. I was traveling with CBS News producer Betty Chin on October 3, 2002, when Hurricane Lili hit the Gulf Coast. It was supposed to have been a major hurricane, but fortunately the winds died down, and Lili made landfall as a category one hurricane. To the bosses in New York, it was no big deal. When the morning began, Betty and I had the lead story in the broadcast. By lunchtime, our executive producer pulled the plug. Betty and I were given permission to head home, and most days that would have been the end of it. Hurricane duty usually means long days, little sleep, and bad food on top of the awful weather conditions and the sad stories you come across. Without the lead story, Betty and I were heading toward New Orleans for a decent meal, a nice hotel, and a good night’s sleep before flying out the next day. We just happened to drive through Meaux. We were lost. Betty and I have probably logged more miles lost than almost any other correspondent and producer team at the network. My fault. Fortunately, Betty is incredibly good-natured, and we have always made the best of it. We weren’t looking for a story in Meaux; the story found us. We had been in the car for hours and had not seen much storm damage when we saw a man standing in an open field littered with trash and a pile of debris on Abshire Road in Meaux. His arms were full of garbage, and he had a big smile on his face. He looked out of place. We wondered why this man looked so cheery when the weather was so lousy. Betty and I decided to stop and ask. We also thought he might direct us to the nearest gas station or at least get us back to the highway.
“Hi ya’ll doin” is the way Jim Williams greeted us. He looked to be in his late twenties, an athletic young man with a cheery disposition. Come to find out he was a lieutenant in the National Guard. His unit had been assigned to help with storm rescue and cleanup. Since there was more cleanup than rescue needed, his commanding officer let him slip away for a bit to check on his own home. It was gone. That open field was Jim’s yard. The trash and pile of debris scattered about was all that was left of his house. By history’s high standard, hurricane Lili was a lightweight. But it was enough to destroy Jim Williams’s home and leave him, his wife, and his three children homeless. Fortunately, Jim’s family had gone to stay with relatives while he was assigned Guard duty. I asked him what he thought might have happened if they had all been at home when the storm hit.
“Boy, just looking at it, I’d be at the hospital or at the morgue right now, one or the other,” he said, still smiling and with sweat gathering at the bottom of his chin.
Betty and I, along with our crew, helped him find a few valuables buried in what used to be the master bedroom. He found a few pictures and the family Bible. He seemed satisfied, like a man who had just eaten a good meal or finished building a bookcase by hand. Why appear so hopeful? I asked him.
“I have faith—that’s just all it is. I can’t attribute it to anything else but just saying, All right, God’s not going to give you anything you can’t handle, so, you know, I just wish He didn’t trust me so much, you know,” and his smile even broadened.
We spent about an hour with Jim Williams. The only time his spirits appeared to falter was when he talked about his children. “It makes you want to cry when your four-year-old goes to your wife, her mom, and says, ‘Mama, why are you crying,’ ” he said.
I have covered plenty of disasters, and you can always tell when someone has been crying. It did not appear that Jim Williams ever shed a tear. He thanked us for our help, and then said he had to leave soon. He was going back to his National Guard unit. “There are people who fared far worse than us, and they need our help,” he said.
In reality, the Williams family had lost nearly as much as any family in Meaux. That did not seem to matter to Jim because he had a job to do. He cheerfully put the needs of others ahead of his own. As we pulled out of his driveway, Jim Williams was smiling and waving. He looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. We thought we had found a something story in this nothing storm. We pleaded with the executives in New York, and about an hour before the broadcast, they dropped another story and made room. Betty and I told the world about Jim Williams on the CBS Evening News that night. Funny, the wonderful golden nuggets God can lead you to when you are lost, with open eyes and outstretched arms.
THE HUG DOCTOR WHO MAKES
HOUSE CALLS
Dr. Regina Benjamin is one of the most beloved physicians in southern Alabama, partly because, for the longest time, she was one of the few. Dr. Benjamin runs a medical clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. She was just one of the many people I profiled for the CBS Evening News in stories about the recovery underway along the Gulf Coast after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. When I met her, she had 4,000 patients. You read right, 4,000 patients. And she made house calls. She drove an average of 300 miles per week across rural Alabama’s shrimp country. She pulled fish hooks out of patients, delivered babies, and stabilized weak hearts. She had long days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Her days got even longer in the months afterward. By some estimates, nearly 6,000 physicians were displaced from the region after Katrina. The hurricane flooded Dr. Benjamin’s clinic. The following New Year’s Day, the clinic caught fire and burned down. She stayed and rebuilt it. I asked her why not just close up shop and leave. She was a highly trained physician, a minority, and could practically name her price someplace else. She had a quick answer.
“This is my place. This is my price,” she said without an ounce of regret, in fact, with a bit of an edge. Most people are fond of their primary-care physician. Dr. Benjamin’s patients said they loved her. Everyone I spoke with used that word, love. Stan White, the mayor of Bayou La Batre, called her “the lifeblood of our community,” adding, “I don’t think we could survive without her.” Certainly any number of people in the area would not have access to health care without her. Her clinic charged seven dollars per visit. Any treatments not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, Dr. Benjamin paid out of her own pocket or with federal grant money. She even dispensed hugs, as did her nurse. The patients affectionately refer to Nurse Nell Stoddard as Granny. She described the clinic this way: “We’re a hugging office. We hug everybody. We’ll hug you if you want to be hugged.” And she did. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been hugged on a story in twenty-five years of reporting.
Dr. Benjamin talked a great deal about the character of her patients, especially the ones who could not afford to pay even the seven dollars. They lack money not pride, she said. They pay what they can when they can. More than just taking care of their health needs, it seemed that Dr. Benjamin was in the business of restoring her patients’ dignity. She insisted she was well compensated.
“To know you made a difference, when a mother smiles after you tell her her baby is going to be okay. There’s nothing like it,” she said, smiling herself. “I’ve got the greatest job in the world,” she said.
I agree with Dr. Benjamin. I feel the same about my job. It’s allowed me to see my share of evil around the world, but it has also brought focus to the compassionate and caring spirit of so many. I can’t look at my life now without recognizing that I too was once one of the “least of us” to whom so many reached out their hands. I won’t live long enough to either repay those who’ve given so much to me or pay it forward. But it will keep me busy and always grateful. As for Regina Benjamin, in 2009, President Obama nominated the hug doctor to be surgeon general of the United States.
TWELVE
The Power of Prayer
and Optimism
God is my strength and power; And he maketh my way perfect.
—2 Samuel 22:33
AS I BECAME ONE of the more senior correspondents at CBS News, people began seeking my opinion and my advice. Everyone from college students to up-and-coming young journalists, even established reporters and peers. They sought me out for encouragement and career counsel. For the longest time it seemed strange to me because I had always been the dependent one, in need of mentoring. I didn’t consider my life or my career to be a model for anyone to follow. But I certainly saw this opportunity as one way to give back some of the time and attention I had been given. If I had the power to influence other people’s lives, I needed to fully understand the source of my own strength. It took me more than forty years, but I was finally beginning to understand where my own power came from. One important factor was patience, the willingness to wait for my opportunities but remain productive in the meantime. As Coach John Wooden said, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” As I’ve mentioned, long before I started at CBS News, the goal was to report for 60 Minutes. It was my equivalent of the professional gold ring. Once at the network, I had to build a body of work and a reputation to get there, or at least get myself the chance. My prayer had never been “Lord, put me on 60 Minutes someday.” It was always just “Lord make me good enough to one day have the chance.”
Not long after I moved to New York, I made it my business to find out where the 60 Minutes offices were located. The staff works in a different building from the rest of CBS News. On lunch breaks, quiet days, and just for a change of scenery, I’d cross the street and make my way over to 60 Minutes, where I’d see some of the most powerful figures in broadcast news: Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl, and Steve Kroft. Later, Bob Simon, Scott Pelley, and Katie Couric. I can still remember watching Ed Bradley gliding down the hallways. Ed made cool look good. I knew a few people who worked there, but I rarely stopped by their offices. I really just wanted to get a feel for the place, like a minor leaguer getting his first chance to walk around the field at Yankee Stadium. While some CBS staffers would walk down the street, smoke a cigarette, or go to the park to clear their head, I’d roam the hallways of 60 Minutes. Long ago, when I overcame illiteracy, I discovered I needed to visualize things, have a snapshot in my mind of what I wanted to accomplish and where I wanted to be. I’d walk by the correspondents’ offices just to peek in and see what they were doing and imagine myself there. That may sound childish, but remember I spent hours of my life staring into a bathroom mirror holding a toothbrush. Much to my relief, the 60 Minutes guys were rarely around. I was often just staring at stacks of books and awards that lined their bookshelves. When they were in, I’d observe them buried in a book, crouched over a computer screen, scribbling notes, or conferring with a colleague. As a visual learner, I also spent a lot of time studying their video clips, watching how they conducted their interviews, how they interacted with their interview subjects. I carry a pretty good library of 60 Minutes stories in my head. I knew I could only get to 60 Minutes if I could see 60 Minutes and put myself in the space. There is power in having the patience to visualize your path.
I’ve spent a good bit of my career covering power. The power of nature and the power of man to do good and cause harm. Still, the greatest forces I’ve ever experienced can’t be captured by a television camera, just felt in the bones. As a Christian, I was raised to believe in other powerful forces, things that have become sources of both strength and comfort. These are all small things in size. You could fit them in a shirt pocket. I’ve come to believe they are fundamental to my strength: the power of prayer, the power of optimism, and, on more than a few occasions, the power of laughter.
I can’t think of a single major decision I make without praying about it. I may seek the advice of my family, my friends, even respected colleagues, but I won’t make a final decision until I’ve prayed. I have always believed that God could fill the gap between what I wanted to do and what was right for me to do—from my desperate prayers as a child for the ability to read to prayers for protection under dangerous circumstances. The war in Iraq tested the power of prayer in my life.
I’ve always prided myself on being physically and mentally prepared for every major assignment I’ve been sent on. I was part of the first wave of embedded journalists trained at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia in December 2002 as the United States moved toward war in Iraq. We ran, hiked, exercised, and took crash courses in first aid, chemical weapons, and explosives. It gave all of us who participated a sense of what we might face overseas. It was the third war-training program I had attended. To prepare myself physically for the war, I also took five-mile walks around my hometown carrying forty pounds in a backpack to strengthen my back and toughen my feet. With flashlights, batteries, Band-Aids, a sleeping bag, and a big bottle of Tabasco sauce, I left for Kuwait in January 2003. I’d learned over the years that Tabasco sauce could make anything taste better, or at the very least mask the taste of whatever I was eating.
Most of us on assignment covering the buildup to war gathered at the Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait. From there, we could go back and forth into the desert where U.S. troops were massing at the Iraq border and still be back at the hotel in time for happy hour. Cameraman Mark Laganga and I teamed up and eventually joined a Marine Corps attack helicopter squadron in late February. The second Gulf War officially started on March 20, 2003. I was away from home for nearly six months. When my tour was over, I came back to the States hoping not to have to return to Iraq any time soon. Boy, was I wrong. I went back to Iraq twice more in less than two years. The first time, I was home for about two months when my bosses asked me to go back again. By that time, there wasn’t a long line of journalists raising their hands for bureau duty in Baghdad at any of the networks, including CBS News. It was certainly understandabl
e. It was dangerous and dirty work, but I took the assignment. I was still in pretty good shape and the dynamics of the war hadn’t changed dramatically. After a month in Iraq, I was back in the States.
With the violence and the death toll in Iraq escalating in March 2005, and the United States deeply entrenched in battle, our executives were once again asking for volunteers to go into Baghdad. It had been nearly two years since I’d come home from Iraq the first time. I didn’t volunteer, but when a colleague scheduled for Baghdad duty got sick, CBS needed a quick replacement. Reluctantly I stepped forward. “Reluctant” because I knew that I wasn’t prepared physically or emotionally to go. With a week to get ready, there was no time for my exercise routine and no time to read all the briefing material on the war to that point. The weekend before I was to travel, I was more nervous than I had been that first trip. This time I knew the risks. Kidnappings, roadside bombs, and snipers abounded. Even the seven-and-a-half-mile trip from the Baghdad airport to the center of the city was treacherous, nicknamed Ambush Alley.
That Sunday I went to church with my wife and children. I did my best to put on a good face for the family. Besides, church was always a place of great comfort. After church, a group of deacons called me up front for prayer. A nice gesture, I thought, prayer is always a good thing. But this would be a new experience for me. The deacons, both male and female, placed me in the middle of a circle. They each put their hands on me, at least a half dozen people with their hands placed on my shoulders, chest, and arms. I admit to being a little uncomfortable at first. I’d certainly seen a number of prayer circles over the years, but this was the first time I had been in the middle of one.