Dan Rather Interview (page: 3 / 9) Broadcast Journalist	Print Interview

Was there a decisive moment when you knew what you wanted to do with your life?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Dan Rather: I've always known how lucky I am and how blessed I am in that I knew very early on what I wanted to do. I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I repeat for emphasis, at that time and place being a reporter meant being a newspaper person. Why this is I've never quite known, but as far back as I can remember in the mists of my childhood, when somebody asked me what I wanted to be, I always said, "I want to be a reporter. I want to work for a newspaper." And when we played those children's games where some people wanted to be a pilot, a butcher, an Indian chief, I always said, you know, "I want to be a newspaper person. I want to be a reporter." I think that's because of my father's passion for newspapers and the fact that newspapers were such a part of our family life.

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In elementary school, my mother, with the help of one of the teachers, helped me to start a school newspaper, which was basically two pages, which my mother laboriously typed on a school typewriter and we sort of stapled together. I recognize that it's the rare person who can say, "Right from the start knew what I wanted to be and that never varied." I never changed off of that. The sponsor of our high school newspaper, Mrs. Wilkinson -- to whom I owe a great deal -- encouraged me, but she did explain to me how difficult it would be to make a living working for newspapers.

And my father, although he read newspapers all the time, he dismissed my wanting to be a newspaper person because he couldn't figure out why anybody would pay you very much to do that. His idea of a professional man was being an engineer because that's what he dreamed of being and what he studied to be. Engineering was very big in the '30s and '40s in what we call the back edge of the industrial revolution in our country. Particularly among people such as my father, who worked with their backs and hands, being an engineer -- where you used your head and you made things that could work -- was a high calling.

But the only question for me was whether I could make a living doing what I had always dreamed of wanting to do. There were few doubts in my mind but from time to time there were doubts. Even my high school teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson, encouraged me greatly and thought I should pursue the dream but was trying to shake me into the reality of what that meant, how hard it was going to be, and perhaps I should have some fall back, maybe get a teacher's certificate, which was a big thing in those days. If you had a teacher's certificate, you could get a job anywhere.

Once or twice when I was right out of college, sort of hanging by my fingernails financially, I had some doubts. But for whatever reason I've always known that I wanted to be a reporter. That was my dream, and after a certain point when I began to understand the dream, I was constantly driving to achieve it.

Did you have role models? Did you have heroes when you were young?

Dan Rather: I did. I had a lot of heroes when I was growing up, one of whom was Edward R. Murrow. He became a hero of mine because when I was bedridden with rheumatic fever there was no television. Television had been invented but it was just a rumor. Certainly in Texas at that time it was only a rumor. But radio was big and getting bigger in the build up to World War II, what Churchill has called "the gathering storm." There was no cure for rheumatic fever at that time. The question was whether it was going to hurt your heart. The doctor said, "The less you move, the better chance you have of never hurting your heart." So...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I was bed-ridden and radio broadcasts became very big for me. And Murrow's star was rising as a chronicler of World War II and he became a hero to me, the fact that he was a journalist, although he was a radio journalist. I cannot in truth say that I was dreaming at that time of being on the radio. I wasn't. My definition of reporting or journalism was still being a newspaper man. But the voices of Murrow, Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Shirer, H.V. Kaltenborn, they spoke from faraway places with strange sounding names, from in the middle of big events, and Murrow was in a sense a star. He became a hero to me.

In the museum of my mind, I see these old mental photographs of my father and my Uncle John listening to the radio in the roll-up to the war. and then the war was underway. I remember as if it were yesterday. For reasons that I'm not sure of, Gabriel Heatter was never a favorite of my father. Gabriel Heatter had a stylized delivery and I think my father sort of felt, "Let's get on with it. Just give me the stuff, will you?"

Anyway we turned on the radio one night and the Battle of North Africa was hanging in the balance. I'll never forget it. I don't know what age I was. I might have been ten. Gabriel Heatter said, "The Desert Fox is seven miles from Cairo." At which my father picked up the little radio, yanked it out and slammed it against the wall. My mother quickly shooshed my little brother and sister and me into the back room, mumbling something about, "Father is not having a good night." He was so disgusted and furious. It looked like the Germans were going to prevail. But as it turned out, Rommel never took Cairo.

I can truly say my father was a hero to me almost from my earliest memory, for a lot of reasons. He was a man's man, a strong man, a good father, a good husband, and also a loving father, and he became a hero to me early on. I had my football heroes. One of the greatest running backs in Houston high school football history was a guy named Bobby Jones, a great broken field runner. He became a hero to me for a long time. I'm not sure I should admit this, but I used to walk by his house and salute.

How about Doak Walker and Kyle Rote?

Dan Rather: Doak Walker and Kyle Rote came later. They were latter day Bobby Joneses. In our neighborhood, football was big. It was a working man's neighborhood and Friday night football was big. In high school we regularly played before 25 to 26,000 people under the lights. Friday night, every week was a big game. For our city championship game we played in front of 27,500 people.

What position did you play?

Dan Rather: I was an end. The book on me was that I was slow but I had good hands.

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