6 Who Is That Girl?
MY TITLE AT CNN was assistant assignment editor¡ªnot much of a step up from desk assistant. But there was one big difference: Here, I actually got to be on TV (not the vote of confidence it might sound like¡ªthere was a lot of airtime to fill and they were desperate for people to fill it).
On camera was where I wanted to be. After all, I'd been "on" my entire life, whether it was at dinner with my family or at the lunch table with my friends. I can't remember a time I ever shied away from the spotlight. Which made me wonder: Why would I come up with the ideas, write the scripts, find the visuals, pick the sound bites, and not be front and center? Determined to get on camera, I would settle for scraps, gladly covering an obscure hearing on Capitol Hill or a no-news press conference at the Department of Transportation, hoping they'd turn into stories.
My big break came in the fall of 1981 when Washington Bureau Chief Stuart Loory, who looked a little like Groucho Marx, said, "I know you're interested in becoming a reporter. So here's your chance: Tomorrow morning I want you to go live from the White House and report on the president's schedule for the day."
I panicked. Live?As in live from the White House? I'd never gone live before. Live TV is working without a net¡ªno do-overs.
"Really?" I said incredulously. "Okay, great." While inside I was thinking, Oh. My. God.
That night I laid out my light blue pin-striped pantsuit. Then I grabbed my hairbrush Marcia Brady¨Cstyle, stared into the mirror, and said in earnest, measured tones over and over, "Katherine Couric, CNN, at the White House¡­Katherine Couric, CNN, at the White House," hoping my given name would lend an air of authority my face and voice lacked. My stomach churned. I spent most of the night in the bathroom.
I woke up at 4:30 a.m., got dressed, and drove to the bureau to rip the AP daybook off the wire machine that detailed the president's schedule. Unfortunately for me, President Reagan was meeting with former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski¡ªa nightmare to pronounce.
At the White House, a crew member helped me insert my IFB, the earpiece that allows the control room to communicate with reporters in the field. With minutes to go before my "hit," I stood there practicing under my breath, waiting for the anchors to throw to me. Through the earpiece I could hear them reading the headlines, then going to a commercial break. As I listened to a jingle about the joys of orange juice, I suddenly heard the anchors' voices.
"Who is that girl?"
"She looks like she's 12 years old."
And suddenly I was on. One of them said, "Katherine Couric is standing by at the White House with more¡­"
I heard myself reciting the president's schedule, my voice so high, it was as if I'd inhaled two balloons' worth of helium.
Everything was off¡ªmy tone, my pacing, the way I looked down at my notes instead of at the camera (although I did pronounce Zbigniew Brzezinski correctly). After I threw back to the anchors, I looked at the crew for positive reinforcement. They didn't say a word.
Back at the Washington bureau, I hoped someone, anyone, would tell me I had done a good job. I walked to the assignment desk, where Bill Hensel was sitting.
"Hi, Bill!" I said eagerly.
"Reese Schonfeld"¡ªpresident of CNN¡ª"just called. He never wants to see you on the air again."
"Did he say anything else?"
"No. That's it." Bill looked at me sympathetically and shrugged. As I slunk away, some Sandra Boynton wisdom on a coffee mug caught my eye: DON'T LET THE TURKEYS GET YOU DOWN.Even though they had, and I was. I looked around at the other reporters and wondered, What do they have that I don't?Then it hit me: experience.
I'd been at the DC bureau for a year and my reporting future wasn't looking particularly rosy. By now, Don Farmer and Chris Curle were at CNN in Atlanta and looking for an associate producer for their noon-to-two broadcast Take Two. They asked me if I was interested.
Uh, yeah. Not only had I found my mentors, I'd found my next chapter.
7 The State of the Onion
IHEADED SOUTH ONI-95 in the white Toyota Corolla my parents had bought me¡ªa gift for going to an affordable state school (my first year at UVA cost less than $2,000). But the car was bare-bones, with no AC, and by the time I passed the giant peach on the big blue sign welcoming me to Georgia, I had a serious case of swamp ass.
My father grew up 140 miles south of Atlanta, in Dublin, where he spent hot, lazy afternoons shooting squirrels with a 12-gauge shotgun and reading. He was bespectacled and studious; at Mercer University in Macon, he was editor in chief of the school newspaper, theCluster.
His great-grandfather Charles Mathurin was an orphan, left on the doorstep of a hospital in Brittany, France. He was taken in and given the name Cour, which in Gaelic means "the smallest little person"; the icwas tacked on as an endearment. Et voil¨¤¡ªCouric.
In 1831, when he was just a teenager, Charles stowed away on a ship bound for America. Onboard, he met a woman named Henriette Fontaine, who was traveling with her husband and child. Before the ship docked in Pensacola, Charles jumped overboard to avoid getting caught. Soon, he and Henriette crossed paths again¡ªher husband and child had both died not long after they'd arrived. Charles and the widow Fontaine (12 years his senior, an early cougar) fell in love, married, and took a wagon train to Eufaula, Alabama, near the Georgia border, where they settled and raised four children. One of them, Alfred Alexis, was my dad's grandfather.
Atlanta figured in my mother's side of the family too, after a lengthy detour in the Midwest. Her mom, Clara Frohsin (Nana to us, pronounced "Nah-nah," the French way), married Bert Hene, a successful architect and contractor primarily in a neighborhood of Omaha called Happy Hollow. They raised my mother and her younger brother, Buddy, like high-class nomads, occupying the fancy homes Bert built and moving on when they were sold (a particular point of family pride: my grandfather built the boyhood home of the future Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett). When Bert died of a heart attack at 58, Nana joined her brothers Leon and Lewis in Atlanta, where they had opened a pair of high-end women's clothing boutiques.
As a child, I loved when Nana came to visit. The minute she arrived, she'd unzip her sky-blue Skylark suitcase and start pulling out gifts¡ªcute outfits and stuffed animals wrapped in tissue for the girls; sugared jelly candies shaped like orange slices for Johnny. I'd sit on her bed and chatter away while she got dressed, rolling a nylon stocking up each shapely leg and attaching it to the snaps dangling from her girdle (that medieval precursor to Spanx). Then she'd step into some formfitting dress (the lavender ultra-suede was my favorite) plus heels. Always heels. Even her slippers had kitten heels. Nana was so accustomed to her calf-flattering heels that when she was barefoot, she walked on the balls of her feet.
We'd play gin at the kitchen table. Nana would have a tissue tucked under her sleeve at the wrist or in her cleavage. She'd hold a Tareyton between her lips, the ever-lengthening ash threatening to dump on the floor, the cards, my head. Sometimes she'd tap it into an ashtray shaped like a cast-iron kettle on three little legs that now lives in my kitchen. (In seventh grade, I'd retrieve the butts and smoke them in the woods behind my elementary school with my friend Betsy.)
By the time Nana was in her eighties and started complaining about all the cats she was seeing under her bed, she was moved to a nursing home. Now that I was living in Atlanta, I visited often, playing the piano for her and the other residents, then giving my mom a full report.
AS AN ASSOCIATE producer on Take Two,my job included thinking of teases for upcoming segments, like cooking demonstrations with British chef Graham Kerr. One time, the recipe involved onions, and because President Reagan had just delivered his State of the Union address, I came up with "Next¡­the state of the onion."
"I love that!" said one of the middle-aged bookers, which put a little pep in my step.
But I was always on the hunt for opportunities to report. To get past my disastrous debut at the White House, I paid a visit to a voice coach. It was kind of a revelation¡ªshe told me not to project from my throat, which resulted in a high-pitched nasal sound, but to relax my belly and speak from my diaphragm. My tone instantly got lower and my voice more mellifluous, but it veered dangerously close to James Earl Jones territory. It would take me another few years to find just the right register.
I also had to learn the craft of interviewing: how to put people at ease, ask the right questions (nothing that could be answered "Yes" or "No"), act interested (99 percent of the time, I was), listen carefully (but never nod as if I'm agreeing), recognize a sound bite, and write to the pictures.
Don and Chris knew how much I wanted to be on-air and happily supplied the training wheels. They sent me to interview Ray Charles, Liberace (we played a duet of "Heart and Soul"), and newcomer Boy George as well as former Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace. I did a story on the outlet malls in Reading, Pennsylvania, putting together a montage of bargain-hunters to the tune of the "William Tell Overture." When I showed it to Don, he pointed out that the editing wasn't in sync with the music. I'd never make that mistake again.
I started dating the show's director, Guy Pepper. Raven-haired, bearded, and newly separated from his CNN anchor wife, he was not my usual straight-arrow preppy type. But he was so clever and quick (he called me Katrina), and we had a blast soaking up all things Southern: grits and biscuits at the Silver Skillet, horseback riding in Dahlonega (we were almost thrown when our horses got spooked), the laser-light show at Stone Mountain. For me, it was a fun, 20-something extended fling¡ªwhich reminds me of the time I flung several shoes at Guy when I thought he was cheating on me.
Taking Take Twoon the road always felt like the big time. We went to Dallas¨CFort Worth and I did a feature on Billy Bob's Texas, the massive honky-tonk. I headed home on Christmas Day. Wandering the deserted airport, wearing the black cowboy hat Billy Bob had given me, I remember missing my parents terribly but thinking it was all for a good cause¡ªi.e., my career
In the spring of 1982, thanks to a budding bro-ship between Ted Turner and Fidel Castro, we broadcast for a week from Havana¡ªthe first American network to do so since Castro took over. A crew that included Don, Chris, me, and Guy chartered a DC-3 to Cuba. I marveled at the pastel-hued buildings and vintage Chevys with their Batmobile fins in a land untouched by time since the '62 embargo. The hotel buffet was laden with salads drowning in mayonnaise, and everyone drank Coca-Cola by the gallon.
The embargo had apparently extended to toilet seats. When we got to our hotel, we discovered that nobody had one. Except me. Everyone was so jealous. I'd never won anything, but I guess you could say I hit the jackpot.