I studied Karen Carpenter’s gaunt face on the cover of People magazine at the supermarket checkout. To think this gifted, wildly successful person was so sick she couldn’t save herself and reverse what was happening to her.
That flipped a switch. Get over this while you still can, I thought. Which I did, and somehow managed to do it on my own. While body-image issues would dog me for years, the death of a childhood idol helped me escape the grip of an illness that, for far too long, had controlled my life.
10
Good Night, David! Good Night, Chet!
MY FATHER LOVED journalism. While he often said the pay was “lousy,” he believed it was important work. He also liked being in the center of the action and thought the people were fun. He once told me being a reporter “feeds your ego, in a funny sort of way.” When my dad covered politics for the Atlanta Constitution, he got such a kick out of the fact that he was on a first-name basis with state legislators.
But with a homemaker wife and a fourth kid （me） on the way, his chosen career just wasn’t sustainable. So, after working in newspapers and two stints at the United Press, he put away his reporter’s notebook and became a PR man, writing press releases and giving speeches for the National Association of Broadcasters. He was 37 years old.
Among ink-stained wretches, shifting to PR is like going to the dark side. But for our family, it meant much-needed stability. At roughly 6:30 every night, my dad would come through the door in his felt fedora and trench coat and drop his briefcase on the plastic carpet protector. As my mom welcomed him home, Johnny and I would run into the living room and squeal, “Kissing again!”
Then my mom would return to the kitchen to finish cooking dinner while my father made himself a drink. Picturing him pouring the Cutty Sark over crackling ice, I sometimes wonder if he was dulling the disappointment, knowing the days of tracking down sources, grilling politicians, and writing a kick-ass lede were behind him.
I INHERITED MY FATHER’S love of words （for a few months there, he had us bring a new word to the dinner table every night—I was particularly proud of incongruous）。 He once gave me a dictionary inscribed To Katie, the wordsmith. Like so many girls of my era, I determined early on that math wasn’t my thing. I remember getting off the school bus in first grade and bawling all the way home because I had gotten a 2 instead of a 1 in arithmetic. It set me on a path—as far away from numbers as I could get and into the arms of words.
My dad also passed down a love of news. At the breakfast table over a bowl of Wheaties, he’d be poring over the Washington Post, pointing out important things that were happening locally and nationally and reading particularly powerful paragraphs out loud.
Following the news became something we shared. At bedtime, he’d call out, “Good night, David!” I’d yell back, “Good night, Chet!” Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, NBC’s big anchor duo in the 1960s. Soon I was spending every Sunday night eating leftover fried chicken on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, watching a riveting new show called 60 Minutes.
My very first news story is preserved in my paisley-cloth-covered diary from fourth grade:
Dear Diary,
On Friday, January 27, 1967, all three astronauts got burned to death on the Apollo rocket. They were Grissom, White and Chaffee. It was very sad.
That same year I started mocking up my own version of the Washington Post in blue ballpoint pen, with news, weather, sports, even obituaries. A few years later, I created my own magazine, called Now, with important articles about the value of a good appearance, nutrition, movie reviews, a crossword puzzle, and original illustrations by yours truly.
My father noticed it all, including my ability to get my homework done under the wire. On many mornings, he’d find me sitting cross-legged against the front door, finishing a book report with seconds to spare, then slamming my notebook shut and running to catch the bus. He might have been exasperated, but he appreciated my ability to work on deadline.
I wrote for my high school paper, the Sentry. In college at the Cavalier Daily, I became the associate features editor and launched a series of professor profiles. There was something about getting beneath their academic facade that really appealed to me. With a bulky tape recorder sitting between us, I was good at disarming them and accessing another side.
My first profile was of an art history professor. The opening sentence: “Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, ‘We put our love where we have put our labor.’ This certainly holds true for Frederick Hartt.”
I sent a copy to my parents. As reliably as the sun coming up, my father had feedback. A typed critique arrived in the mail: