Sunday, November 6, 1977 - When the dam burst and sent a 120-mile-per-hour wall of water through Toccoa Falls Bible College I was 31 miles away sleeping through a rainstorm at my home in the tiny community of Lula, Georgia, and Rosalyn Carter was 564 miles away at the White House. We arrived at the devastated college simultaneously, soon after the bodies of 39 victims had been removed.
Bruce Hall, my boss from a former life, arrived with his CBS-TV crew shortly afterward. Bruce—the guy who’d fired me from my TV job in Jacksonville 6 years earlier—tried to elbow me aside so he could get a better shot of the First Lady when she gathered the news crews around her for a statement, but I refused to get out of his cameraman’s way. He cussed and whispered and pushed me, but I stood my ground, as he would have wanted me to do had I still been working for him. The last time I let a TV crew push me aside was in 1967 in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. On that occasion, the TV guys got a good shot of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I got a bunch of background noise and a good cussing-out from my boss back at the radio station.
By 1977, I had been a local radio Newsman in nearby Gainesville, Georgia, for more than six years.
(*We “Newsmen” didn’t call ourselves “Reporters.” We were much more important than that! A “Newsman” was reporter, editor, anchor and—often—talk-show host and sportscaster…a one man department who worked for the thrill of scooping the competition, for the satisfaction of informing the public, for the ego-gratification of becoming well-known. And for an income slightly higher than that of most disk-jockeys and much higher than that of all female employees who weren't in sales.)
(**President Jimmy Carter, a few days earlier, had signed a bill raising the minimum wage from $2.30 per hour to $3.35. The increase was set to take effect three years later—on January 1, 1981. I personally was glad the country had three years to get ready for it, because I wasn’t sure the economy could survive a minimum wage like that. Every low-level employee in America making almost as much as a “Newsman?” Go figure.)
Bruce was national, having risen from WJXT-TV Assignment Editor, to CBS-TV correspondent… and I was local (though I did on-the-air reports for ABC Radio that day and fed information to a CBS Radio editor in New York, as well as to A-P and The Atlanta Constitution.) Even had I not been filing reports with the networks, I wouldn’t have stood aside for Bruce’s crew. What Mrs. Carter had to say was interesting—maybe even important to some people—and my audience was going to hear it clearly. No more allowing myself to be shoved aside. I stood my ground.
Bruce had fired me from my TV job when I was 21, in early 1971. We were owned by Post-Newsweek—owners who supposedly had very deep pockets. But word came down from Washington headquarters that every department had to lay off a certain number of employees. Even though I was weekend Assignment Editor and Anchorman, supervising a staff of 12, I was the youngest in my department and marked for dismissal. When I asked Bruce for a reason that the ax was falling on me, he assured me that I was great on-air but—“well, times are bad…and, uh, your writing isn’t up to par…”
My writing isn’t up to par? I was the guy who cleaned up other reporters’ writing for the 4 weekend editions of the news that I anchored. I pointed out that I’d been getting published in national magazines since the age of 18. I was a stringer for the wire services. I’d covered hurricanes (Betsy & Camille) for radio and riots (in Jacksonville) for CBS-TV. My copy sizzled. I could churn out airworthy stuff faster than anyone. And they were letting me go for my writing ability?
I argued that I didn’t consider myself all that good on the air, but Bruce assured me that I was the best. And had a great future in it. But he didn’t like my writing.
I moved my wife, my daughter and my repressed anger to North Georgia for a radio job in my grandparents’ home town which, after Jacksonville, was like retreating into a cocoon. I toyed with the idea of being a novelist, sometimes producing hundreds of pages a week. On more than one occasion in the 70’s I spent my entire one-week vacation babysitting and writing.
Many books get turned down before finding a publisher—the first Harry Potter book was rejected by the first 12 publishers who read it; Bridges of Madison County was rejected by more than 60. Each time one of my books was turned down, I tossed it into a trunk and forgot about it.
..........................................
It might be interesting to revisit some of those manuscripts some day. If it turns out that some are publishable, the joke will be on me. I, who (after becoming a manager) preached goal-setting and persistence to people who worked for me, was only persistent with my writing, not my marketing. Perhaps I’m mature enough now to laugh at myself if I discover that I’ve written something that would have paid off years ago had I kept submitting it to publishers! Or maybe I’ll jump off the nearest ledge. Or treehouse.
On the other hand, if Bruce was right about my writing skills (or lack thereof,) this trunk full of manuscripts that I use as a footrest beneath my desk will make a heck of a bonfire for a weenie roast with the grandkids one of these nights….
It might be interesting to revisit some of those manuscripts some day. If it turns out that some are publishable, the joke will be on me. I, who (after becoming a manager) preached goal-setting and persistence to people who worked for me, was only persistent with my writing, not my marketing. Perhaps I’m mature enough now to laugh at myself if I discover that I’ve written something that would have paid off years ago had I kept submitting it to publishers! Or maybe I’ll jump off the nearest ledge. Or treehouse.
On the other hand, if Bruce was right about my writing skills (or lack thereof,) this trunk full of manuscripts that I use as a footrest beneath my desk will make a heck of a bonfire for a weenie roast with the grandkids one of these nights….
return to: http://reynoldswriter.blogspot.com/
