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DeadlinesAnyone who grew up in America in the late 20th Century had to be aware of Dan Rather’s fabled run of 24 years as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. Myself, I’ve been a fan ever since that tough Texas correspondent bearded the wily Richard Nixon at a presidential news conference in 1974, shaking Nixon’s aura of unassailability – and wound up asking Nixon many of the toughest, direct questions he ever faced about the Watergate scandal. For the record, Rather tackled that task many years before David Frost tried to do it.
So when I completed my new novel, the media murder mystery, “Deadlines,” Rather was my furthest-out, long-shot hope of scoring a memorable endorsement. I thought, no one in the country knows more about news and reporting than Dan Rather. He remains our preeminent television journalist. So if Rather reads and likes my book, that should provide one helluva boost to my project! You see, in addition to writing a good tale and a good mystery, I also wanted to document and celebrate newsrooms, and the distinctive ways that they operate.
Through contact with Rather’s reporting staff in the summer of 2009, I was able to make my way up the hierarchy in his current organization, which produces “Dan Rather Reports” for HDNet, a high-definition cable television station. To my delight and amazement, I was soon told that Dan had agreed to read, “Deadlines,” and would be getting back to me with an opinion. But you could have knocked me over with a Post-It note when his judgment arrived, in mid-September:
“Every reporter worth his or her notepad is a sleuth at heart. Paul McHugh brings this truth to life with crackling suspense and a true, ink-stained veteran's eye for the newsroom.”
Wow. Über-newsman Dan Rather not only liked it, he used variations on the word, “true,” twice to describe my story! I wanted to thank him for his endorsement, and in some more direct and immediate way than simply sending a note back through his staff – though of course, I did that too. My eye happened to fall upon an ad in the San Jose Mercury News, announcing that Dan would be a special keynote speaker at an annual benefit breakfast for the Shelter Network, at a hotel in Burlingame, on Oct. 8. Perfect! My wife and I bought two tickets.
The Shelter Network, which provides housing and support services for homeless families, evidently is the sort of charity that appeals to Rather, who grew up a blue-collar home in Texas during the Depression and never forgot that experience – or what it meant, or how decent folks ought to respond.
In his 20 minutes in the limelight at this breakfast, Dan gave an amusing talk about his early years in the news business, followed by a heartfelt plea for generous support for the Shelter Network cause. As this breakfast drew to a close, I made my way toward his table, near the speaker’s platform, but suddenly he stood and was ushered out . . .
I had been told that Dan might give a “meet-and-greet” session in the hotel lobby following the breakfast, so my wife, Dawn, and I wandered out the lobby, and stood around for fifteen minutes or so. And suddenly, there he was, The Man himself, looking younger than his eighty years, dapperly dressed and trim. We moved into the rope line, and gradually made our way toward him.
We were about forty people back in a line that gradually grew to number several hundred. I was impressed with the care and solicitude Rather took in talking to each person he met. Most of the time, they were content with having him autograph something, then having their picture taken with the Famous Newsman. Dan displayed the amazing facility of being able to turn up the rheostat on a brilliant grin with each guest, and look absolutely delighted to be standing by their side. At the same time, I could see him flick an appraising glance at the next people in line, assessing how to relate to them.
Suddenly, it was my turn. I felt a bit tongue-tied, to be speaking to one of my journalistic heroes.
“Dan, I’m Paul McHugh, and I want to thank you for endorsing my novel, ‘Deadlines.’”
He blinked a time or two, as he realized the actual author of a book he had only recently read as a computer file had just popped up in the flesh, right in front of him.
“You should know,” Dan Rather told me. “I never endorse any book I can’t read all the way through. And I loved every moment of yours.”
We shook hands warmly, and I asked him if he could accept a gift. Because I held a copy of my non-fiction book, “Wild Places,” and small box of one of my favorite confections, dark-chocolate covered marzipan from See’s, a Bay Area company.
“This is a local product,” I told him. “These make great energy pills for a traveling man.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I just got back from traveling. I was in Africa, working on a story on poor people being coerced to sell their organs. So, your book. How long did it take you to write it?”
“Two years. I did it after leaving the San Francisco Chronicle. I started it after I took a buyout from the paper. Before that, I was a journalist for more than twenty years. I wrote the novel to celebrate all I’d learned about doing that job.”
“There’s no better feeling than doing all the groundwork, then having a story come together for release, is there?”
“No,” I agreed with Dan. “That’s absolutely the best.” At that point I became acutely aware of the hundreds of people standing behind me in the rope line, and that Rather had already given abundantly of the scant available time for any one individual in that gathering.
“Well, Dan, I just want to thank you for your many years of service to this nation,” I told him, “and wish you a lot of luck in your ongoing battle to enlighten those boneheads at CBS.”
That last, by the way, was a reference to Dan’s plucky, ongoing lawsuit contesting his poorly engineered departure from the network. We shook hands one last time. As I turned away, I saw him hand the book and chocolates to staffers managing the ropeline, and I heard him say to them, “Please, take care of these for me. They are from my friend, Paul McHugh.”
And I felt like I was fairly well walking on air for the rest of the morning.