In tenth grade after school one day, I was making out with my boyfriend, Steve Elliott, in his basement. He went to another high school, was two years older, was the product of divorce, and his mother worked—all of which sounded a bit dicey to my parents.
Suddenly, we heard banging.
Steve and I untangled and sat up. He craned his neck and saw my mom’s Keds through the window well. I quickly collected myself, ran upstairs, and opened the front door.
“Mom,” I said, my face flushed, my hair a mess.
“Come with me,” she ordered and threw my orange Schwinn Varsity bike into the back of the station wagon. I wanted to crawl under the vinyl seat. We didn’t say a word the entire way home.
My mom was born in 1923, just three years after women won the right to vote, decades before we’d enter the workforce in real numbers.
Sometimes I wonder: What if little Elinor Hene had been told the sky was the limit? If she’d come along a generation later, what might she have been—a graphic artist? She loved to sketch and paint. A stockbroker? When the AIDS crisis hit, she bought shares of Trojan condoms. Head of operations at some big company? She certainly ran a tight ship. Who knows—maybe she wouldn’t have changed a thing.
MY HOURS AT ABC were brutal. Going from the morning shift to afternoons to overnights totally screwed up my body clock. Driving down Canal Road after work one afternoon, I felt certain my life was over.
I’d been living at home. The Peter Max bedspreads I’d begged my mom for in junior high had been replaced by granny-friendly rayon quilts; the chartreuse walls had been repainted cream. As much as I enjoyed my mother’s home cooking, I wanted to be on my own. Fortunately, one of Wendy’s roommates was moving out, and she asked if I wanted the spot. What could be better than rooming with Wendy, her friend Margaret, who worked on Capitol Hill, and Leslie, who had a golden retriever named Amy?
They lived in a townhouse on Dent Place across the street from the fire station, a 15-minute drive from my parents and just a few blocks from the heart of Georgetown. On weekends we’d grab turkey and Brie on baguettes from the French Market or head to Au Pied de Cochon （the Pig’s Foot—yum） for omelets and fries and to flirt with the sexy French waiters. At some point, Wendy started dating Sam Donaldson （back when no one batted an eye at workplace relationships）。 One day he showed up at our door in a white shirt, white pants, white belt, and white shoes. I turned around and yelled, “Hey, Wendy, the Man from Glad is here!”
I was a total slob and Wendy was meticulous—she almost had a coronary one day when I balanced a mug of coffee on her crisp white duvet. I’d sometimes rifle through her sweaters, disrupting her elaborate system, everything organized by color and pattern. Knowing the Oscar/Felix thing might not be working for Wendy, my mom drove over to Dent Place one day and pleaded with her not to kick me out. Wendy told her not to worry.
THERE WERE A handful of female correspondents at ABC, and I studied their every move: Bettina Gregory, a Rosalind Russell–style toughie; motherly Ann Compton, who covered the White House with Sam and hired me to babysit her kids when I was looking to supplement my $7,000 salary; tall, striking, platinum-blond Cassie Mackin, who practically glided through the newsroom on her cool confidence.
I was just as fascinated by the male reporters: Rising stars Charlie Gibson and Brit Hume calling in on the “hotline” （a literal red phone with a special ring） from Capitol Hill with big scoops; Lou Cioffi, a foreign correspondent who got so miffed when I asked if he was a cameraman （honest mistake—at the time, he was wearing a Members Only jacket and xeroxing his expense report）。 Don Farmer was a 20/20 correspondent, married to Chris Curle, a gorgeous and talented local anchor at the ABC affiliate WJLA. During one high school summer, I had taken a journalism class that included a field trip to the station. I remember walking by Chris Curle’s desk and seeing, alongside legal pads and pens, hot rollers and a Clairol makeup mirror. Wow, I thought. So glamorous.
One afternoon, I snuck upstairs and poked my head into Don’s office. “I have some story ideas for 20/20 I’d love to show you,” I said. He smiled encouragingly, knowing the chutzpah that required, and invited me in.
I read him the six ideas I had typed out, including one about a treatment center for gambling addicts in Pikesville, Maryland. Don listened and nodded, then thanked me. I left him the list and headed back to the newsroom.
I don’t know if he ever actually used any of my ideas. But I do know that getting on Don Farmer’s radar changed my life.