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Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist
I was always interested in newspapers. I can't remember a time when I wasn't. I believe that comes from the fact that my father -- who worked with his back and his hands, as well as his heart, but he was basically a laborer, and who had not finished high school -- considered newspapers as the poor man's university, and he was an avid reader of newspapers, along with my Uncle John, who is now deceased, but my father's younger brother. And they would read the newspapers and then argue, debate, discuss way into the night such things as the rise of Nazism, Hitler's Mein Kampf, the book that Hitler wrote. They discussed world affairs, national affairs. They had almost a knock-down, drag-out fight over whether Franklin Roosevelt should run for a third term. I remember that very well. So I was interested in newspapers because my father, I think, was interested in newspapers. And my mother read as well, but my father really devoured newspapers.
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Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist
One summer -- I can't remember my age but I couldn't have been more than seven or eight -- at the local park -- we called her "the lady in the park." Looking back on it, she was a social worker hired by the city, and she was just "the lady at the park." She came around and talked to you and tried to find out what you were interested in. The lady in the park talked to me one day about books. She read me something out of a children's book and then asked me if I'd like to go to the library. Now at that age, and that time, at that place, she may as well have been talking about Xanadu. I don't think I'd heard of a library, although my parents had books somehow or another, but I said, "Well yes. I'd like to go to the library." And she organized a little trip for two or three of us to the Heights Library on Heights Boulevard, which was indeed a magic place, and that was lucky for me. I loved it. It was obvious to the lady in the park that I loved it and she took me back there a number of times that summer, and near the end of the summer asked me if I would like to go to the main library downtown. And we took the 8th Street shuttle bus up Heights Boulevard to Washington Avenue and then transferred to the big bus and went to the main library. Such a place I had never seen. It seemed a kind of combination castle out of King Arthur's time and about as close as a child could imagine heaven to be. I remember we checked out Paul Bunyan. I had a library card by this time from the Houston Heights Library and I was allowed to check out one book from the main library and I checked out Paul Bunyan. Looking back on it, it was a decisive time for me, because it really turned me on to books and a lifetime of reading.
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Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist
There was a kind of recession on and I had a very hard time finding a job. In answer to your question, you know, when did I know broadcasting was going to be the way, I interviewed for a lot of jobs when I came out of the Marines and got none, and I was beginning to get desperate. You know, I was working odd jobs to keep my head above water. I got what -- looking back on it -- amounted to a tryout with the Houston Chronicle. This was the big thing. The Chronicle was the biggest newspaper. And here I was within spitting distance of the dream at the Chronicle, but the Chronicle owned a radio station, a big 50,000 watt radio station. Looking back on it, they quickly figured out -- I think partly because I was such a poor speller -- that I wasn't going to be a newsroom star at the Houston Chronicle. But I had worked at the radio station in Huntsville for three years so I went to work, if you will, at the Chronicle's radio station. And when I got to the radio station -- this was not my dream job, it was just -- it was a full-time job, full-time work. A guy named Bob Hart was the news director there, and he gave me a break. He put me on and I loved it from the second I got into it. I mean, this was a real reporting job! I covered city hall, police beat, local courts. It was real reporting. Real beat reporting.
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George Rathmann
Founding Chairman, Amgen
I can remember at the ages of 8, 9 and 10, my brother going into science. He was quite a bit older than I was. My brother-in-law being in medical research at Lilly, things like that. But I was actually, about that time, I was also reading medical books and the popular type of books, Paul de Kruif and Microbe Hunters and things like that, Pasteur and Ehrlich, and that was a huge stimulus to think about medical research. I never stopped thinking about it. I got myself into more physics and chemistry along the way. Some of the excitement there was learning how to create explosive reactions whenever you wanted to, in a way that you were pretty sure wasn't going to hurt you. Fortunately I never was even close to being injured. In high school and those days, those adventures sometimes were rather painful, when people got semi-disabled with fingers and other things. So it's not a very good role model for people. But getting your hands on early chemicals and physical experiments is a really stimulating part, experiencing it yourself. So there's a whole combination of things that involve role models, and people would give you stimulus by their objections. My brother-in-law, in my case, would set up little experiments so he could build some kind of a projector with a few little objects, and all of a sudden you were really creating something. That's very exciting, and if you happen to be susceptible to this, as I was, it leaves an imprint that never goes away. So I was probably fascinated from maybe an 8-year-old age right on up.
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George Rathmann
Founding Chairman, Amgen
When you get to a large company -- even though you started as a tiny company -- when you get to a large company, you know full well they can get along without you. And that's great. That's the way it has to be. But when you look at a small new one, you get the feeling that it could go under, or it could fail to see anywhere near its full potential. So you can make a huge difference. And it may be arrogance. There's certainly an element of pride there. But I think it's a fun thing to think about all the things you might be able to do -- and you find out. Of course, you get this impression anyway when you start dealing with people and they say, "Oh my gosh, you've done that already, and you've done that already. Ah, if you'd just tell me about how to do this." I spent two-and-a-half hours this morning -- that's why I missed the morning session -- because somebody heard I was going to be in Phoenix, and they just wanted to talk to me about their new company. We talked for a couple hours on a company that has five employees, but they've got a long way to go. And they can make it. I mean, they can make it. They just need to get encouragement, and I don't want to join that board. I've got plenty to do. But at least once in a while, when you see that the person needs more than advice; he needs maybe some leadership and some direct involvement by somebody, then you feel like, "I think I'd like to do it." But it's hard to make a difference when you're just going to be an advisor. I may make a difference in that company this morning. May happen again and again, because a lot of people come by. But I always have the fear that a little bit of advice could be very dangerous. Whereas, you put yourself into it, it's your life. Then what you do is probably going to be more productive. So you get the feeling -- I still have the feeling that this new company -- there's a lot of things I can do there. I've been there now 120 days. I probably have ten years of work ahead of me to make sure that it realizes its full potential, but that's very exciting. I think that's what is exciting.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: It's all special. They were all very special experiences, even the ones that didn't work. It's like saying which of your children do you love the most? Sometimes you have a special feeling for things that didn't work. It's like a child with a deformity, a child that doesn't quite make it. He is not loved less, he is sometimes even loved more, because you felt you didn't do enough for him. So, they all stand out. And I don't try and differentiate between them. People ask me which is my favorite play. Which is your favorite August Wilson play? I have no favorites. They are all my favorites. My work is my favorite.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: Now, that's why I'm in the theater. To take those lives, to reveal them. Not just those lives, any life. And that's what's important about theater, or should be. It does reflect the lives of a totality of a community that exists out there, and does speak to the totality of that community. Not all at once, but through its own particularness, which is what Raisin did. Other people were able to find themselves in it. I remember when we first did Fences at Yale Rep. My promotional manager, a wonderful woman, she had come to see a run-through, and she sat with me afterwards. She said, "Do you know, I looked at the play, and I looked at that role that James Earl Jones is playing, and I said, you know, that's the man down the street. I know him, that's the man down the street." A little further into the play, she said, "No that's not the man down the street, that's my brother." And a little further, "No, not my brother, that's my father." At the end of the play, she said, "I said to myself, no, that's not my father, that's me." And it's that kind of universality, that stems from particularity, that makes a work of value and reach out beyond itself. Not by trying to reach out beyond itself, but by reaching deeper into itself, to its own truth. And that's what's wonderful about theater for me.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: After three years of it, when I should have gone to law school, I ended up not going to law school and determining that I would have a life in the theater. I had to decide at that point what security was, what it meant. Was security property? Was security money in the bank? Or was security getting up in the morning and not counting the hours? Having a life, not a job. The theater was something that seemed to satisfy my life-need. I was not concerned about, would I make it, would I not make it, would I be successful, would I not be successful. The opportunity to function in that area was something that compelled me and I ended up in the theater.
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