My Little Orange Bicycle, the search for Cheeseburgers in a Hurricane Zone and the Metamorphosis of a Great Anchorwoman

BY BRIAN O’KEEFE

“Wow..let’s go look at that..its a huge fire!”, I commanded my Lyft driver who was driving me to work yesterday.  A quick detour, I thought, just one less turn to my ABC office; a straight shot into the hills above Glendale.  Wherever you live in Greater Los Angeles..or in Southern California, basin or valley…either way there’s a straight shot into the hills.  I live just one block south of the hills of Runyon Canyon, one of the rustic north borders of Hollywood.  Eight miles away from home and just a stones throw from work, we sped about a dozen blocks toward a huge crawling 15 acre brush fire.

When we got there there were no fire engines…except in our rear view mirror.   It wasn’t the first time.  Notoriously as an adult I am always fifteen minutes late in life to everything—except if its Breaking News.  Then, I’m right on time. Like clockwork.

Throughout my childhood, I had a nose for news. On my little orange bicycle I would ride to the fire or paramedic calls, often getting there before the firemen because I knew the secret Morse like code of the fire horn which directed them to a fire or a heart attack or car accident in our little Village of Evening Shade…I mean, Floral Park, NY.   “It’s a lady in her kitchen, she had a heart attack”, I once told an arriving paramedic, as if I were his boss or something.   I was thirteen.

On special occasions, (Inaugurations, the Son of Sam murders, Elvis’s death,) my most loving mother would let me sit in the living room and eat dinner and watch, first, Eyewitness News on NY’s Channel 7 mother ship WABC with Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel.  I for some reason paid very close attention to what the two of them had to say. Whenever they ad libbed or had trouble throwing to a piece or reading the TelePrompter, I noted it in my barely teen aged brain.  That was just the appetizer!

The main course?  World News Tonight with Frank, Max and Peter that rare attempt of three anchors worldwide (a worthy experiment prescient of what cable news would bring us a couple years later). I remember when that anchor triumvirate was announced. I also remember, when I was even younger, Barbara Walters co anchoring with Harry Reasoner…and even as a child I could see he was threatened by her.  Ask any Google-free Nexis-less person to name one accomplishment or interview Harry ever got.  And get out a notebook to list the dozens that even the least astute viewer can remember of Barbara’s interviews…and network anchor jobs!

Almost forty years later I am a producer for ABC based at KABC in Los Angeles the slightly lighter and far more glamorous twin of New York’s flagship.  The Bill and Roger of LA (Michelle Tuzee and Mark Brown) walk by my edit rooms on their way to their set twice, nightly.

From the get go I dreamed big to work in network news. In college, pre-DVR or Tivo,  I would go to bed early and set my alarm for 1 am to wake up and watch NBC News Overnight with Linda Ellerbee and Lloyd Dobyns. They were clever writers and speakers, I thought. I became obsessed with Ellerbee and her writing style, wit and conversational tone.  Even in my twenties I would wake up even earlier …at 11:30 pm to watch Nightline in its heyday, where my Inner Mary Claude obsession with foreign news was cultivated and fed. Judy Mullers OJ coverage pieces were brilliant pieces of video journalism that kept me grounded in domestic news.  I got my first job at CBS in 1987 when Andrew Heyward, who went on to run CBS News, spotted at the top of my resume, in bold extra large font my telephone number:  516 – 3 5 8- N E W S (I believe I spaced it just like that)  Obsessed? Insane? Driven?  Creative, probably.  I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Back on my little orange bicycle, little did I know that I would eventually be Dan Rather’s youngest producer at a Texas story, no less and one of the first serious mass shootings at Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. That I would write and produce with Barbara Walters in London for the Wedding of the Century. Her line edits were amazing. Keep it simple and clear. (“Brian, there’s no reason for me to say “of course”… it’s unnecessary.”) That I would have the professional joy of producing for ten years with the masteress of poetry and story,  Diane Sawyer in many places, most notably the tsunami in Thailand.

But, nothing would prepare me for the big story, one that I would cover for weeks at a time. The Great Hurricane.  No, not Sandy. That story died quickly. Katrina. The Historic Hurricane with a tricky one-two punch.  Her wake is still aching, almost a decade later. Abandoned swaths of neighborhoods still lie vacant and dormant, like a movie set depicting the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

With social media in diapers, the story snuck up on the world….when helicopters showed the unbelievable flooding and eroded coastline that the Gulf of Mexico devoured.  But the very first sign and imagery from within the destruction zone came before dawn.  Before the choppers …before the live phoners…only one broadcaster was able to get on the air in the darkness of a very grim morning, transmitting to the world.  

In tears, just blocks from her childhood home, Robin Roberts was the first journalist to get the message out. She announced to the world that the decimation and damage was staggering, visible in the crumpled gas station behind her.  After a long, frightening sleepless night, the first of soooo many.  And after a long worrying drive through the morass of darkness, destruction, power lines, bodies and areas of massive flooding.

“Brian, where exactly are you?”, asked James Bogdanoff, the overnight senior producer, for the thirteenth time. “are you going to make it?”  Robin, myself, my co-producer Sara Ruth and a crew from NY landed on a private charter in Lafayette, normally a two hour drive to NOLA or Gulfport further East.  Airports were closed, no electricity and lots of death surrounded us.  Our drive took us more than nine hours, crawling through incredibly scary environs. At the rate we were going we would barely make air at 7 am EST, 6 am in the Gulf.

And we weren’t just going there for a TV live shot to show-open Good Morning America. There was something more important: Robin’s mother.  Robin made it clear that her family was the priority. She needed to find out that they were safe. We learned things were getting serious at one of the police headquarters we came upon as we crawled South and East…and I remember this as clear as yesterday. “Prepare yourself, people.” said a rather frank police woman. “There are major casualties over there…lots of bodies everywhere.”  Thanks, I thought.  Thanks Miss Ridiculously Honest Police Lady. Could you have softened the language a little,  I screamed in my head!!  I was furious. Robin, naturally was not.  She was calm and gracious, even facing possible personal calamity. She stayed composed and never moaned about what might be happening.

Robin’s composure was no surprise. And this is before her own personal one two punch of breast cancer and MDS leukemia, if you can believe it. Why? She was the daughter of one of the great educators in Mississipi history and a Tuskegee Airman. I always say this about her. With parents like hers, how could she not be a faith enriched gentlewoman of the South. Classy. Always. Even in the face of possibly losing her closest relatives….who were nestled through the region.

As a live TV producer at a huge national natural disaster, your priorities are (and not necessarily in this order) a satellite feed pathway, information and an anchor who is uninjured and can communicate clearly. In the dark it didn’t matter where we were. But, I picked a crumpled and tattered shiny white Hess gas station. It was a technical marvel and miracle that we were able to get a signal out. The spot was selected  after a little mathematics, deduction and …prayer.   

The only way Robin could see if her mother was OK..and for us to get on the air…was to stop our technical truck and crew and set up a live shot.  But, time was ticking. It was less than an hour before air and we were still at least 20 blocks from Robin’s mother’s house. Family first. “Bodies everywhere” we had heard.   A police officer offered to drive Robin to her mother, while we set up the shot, but we had to move fast.  And true to form, I told the police officer what to do and I grabbed him and whispered quietly: “Listen, if something bad has happened to Robins mother and sisters, you must come back here and tell me.before we go on the air.”  I locked eyes with him…and begged. “If they are OK..or relatively speaking “ok” grab her and get her back here ASAP,” I implored. For a nanosecond, I was a heartless TV producer worrying about making air.

Then, the scariest 45 minutes of my career happened.  The longest 45 minutes of my career. The slowest 45 minutes of my career.  There were more than 45 phone calls in those 45 minutes. At least.  

Our technical marvel was embodied in one human being. A long, incredibly tall and thin and incredibly talented engineer whose name Im blanking but noone called him by his name at all. They called him “Stretch”.  And “Stretch” saved the day. Or so we thought.  The feed kept teetering and tottering. With no electricity we needed a generator to “feed” our feed.  After dear James (who sadly we lost to a viscious cancer a few years later) and the mensch of all mensches and television legend Senior Broadcast Producer Stu Schwartz kept me breathing over the phone.  

At  Ten. Minutes. To. Seven.  in the East there was no sign of Robin and our feed wasnt working.  Something about the male or female doohickey thingamajig that connected our camera to the satellite feed.   The feed returned.  Then dissapeared… then returned. Then there was no audio. Then Robin arrived. Her mother was alive.

With ragtag cell service and satellite phone I could hear the countdown and with two seconds to air, Robin thumbed up to NY. At literally the last second our feed was up (Thanks, Stretch!!)  and Robin could hear Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer at Times Square.  I still see it all in slow motion.  I could tell Charlie asked her something that made her cry.  “Theyre OK..they’re alright”, Robin uttered barely able to speak.

The control room was ecstatic.  We were the only network to carry a signal out from what slowly emerged and became visible to us …and the world, as the sun climbed ever so slowly into the sky.  Our excitement of live television history was quickly replaced with sheer breathless absorption of shocking destruction.  A sea of wood planks, like toothpicks…for miles!!!   Downed trees, cars and trucks in bizarre mangled forms.

Neighborhoods wiped off the map. Earth devoured by Sea.  Our bodies running on adrenaline. My eyeballs were already numb.

People do not realize what its like to be food-less and sleepless surrounded by bodies and destruction– with no electricity or phone coverage…on deadline!!  I’ve been there several times.  And in the Gulf Coast, we did this cycle for what felt like weeks:  

Do live shot.

Drive around disaster zone on rationed gasoline.

Shoot stories.

Write stories.

Feed stories.

Do evening news live shot.

Find cheeseburgers (Standby for that story)

Sleep in our van

Wake up at dawn for next live hit

Rinse. and Repeat  until Delirious and Comatose  

The subculture of a disaster zone was astonishing. Finding gasoline was difficult. Finding food was harder. Maintaining a generator not easy.  On one of my story or gasoline runs on Day Three of Four I saw a hand painted roadside sign   FREE CHEESEBURGERS   well maybe they werent free (delirium kicking in).  But I obtained a dozen and brought them back under cloak and dagger.  Robin was happy …we were all happy. And we slept like babies.  Robin in the front passenger seat of our van/ SUV..with her feet out the right window. Me in drivers seat, in my own Business Class seat, with my feet hanging out the left front window. Sarah was curled up in the back compartment.  Hot. Humid. Mosquitos after a hurricane are the size of moths!

The cheeseburgers became quite the commodity.  A rare gift in a land with no commerce or food for many many miles.  I briefly was reminded of a book I read in junior high school about animalistic evil behavior of people trapped in a similar situation.  The books main character came to life in the form of a colleague.   One day I had two extra cheeseburgers after my cheeseburger run…and right before our eyes a producer from another ABC show begged us for the last two.  He didnt realize we could hear him, as he went to HIS anchorperson and said, “Look what I found..I got you a cheeseburger!”  I have never looked at him the same way since. LOL!

The days ahead were rough. Each day brought more bad news for Robin.  Close friends of her parents and many friends and people Robin knew were lost and claimed by Katrina.  I’ll never forget as we first drove through the Ground Zero of her dearly beloved Pass Christian and neighbor towns.  So many homes.  Whole neighborhoods E R A S E D…   Robin’s disbelief and deep personal pain as she stood on the only thing that remained of her high school: its front stoop.  

It certainly was a lifetime and career milestone to witness the recovery of the Gulf Coast.  The phrase Gulf Coast I dont think I ever heard before Katrina.  Many days I would spend with Robin…for years…covering the rebirth of the region.  It was her passion.  And so I witnessed something professionally wonderful, too.  The metamorphosis of a national journalist…a growth and maturity that only enhanced her already beautiful qualities as a person.  And boy did she make her mother proud. And it was truly palpable: the whole Gulf Coast loved Robin back.

Certain anchors and television stars attract gawkers, starers maybe even wavers in public. Robin attracts huggers…and touchers. People want to hug and touch her, they love her so.   I saw this as we drove around a couple weeks later.  Word had spread that Robin was leading the national message for help and supplies needed for the area.  She and Diane Sawyer came down again and again.

So it was no surprise how it seemed like the whole Gulf Coast and with it, the entire nation, rooted Robin on through her cancer and then the bone marrow transplant to erase her subsequent leukemia.  I remember simply going to a football game in New Jersey and taking a crew and having people deliver a video get well card for Robin.  People of all ages and walks of life wishing her well.

I fondly remember the incredibly strong Lucimarian Roberts, Robin’s beautiful mother. How her faith kept the locals strong right alongside her. And they loved her so.  How as I was headed to the airport after another exhausting trip and she called me offering me something to eat.  How I felt guilty saying no.  How her elementary school teacher Miss Schnegg mentored her all the way to college. One of my proudest caareer achievements was writing and producing with Diane the obituary tribute to Mrs. Roberts life that aired on Good Morning America the day after her death in between Robins cancer and bone marrow transplant.  How I felt she and God did that for a reason. How Lucimarian Roberts taught many people the lessons of selflessness and grace and trust in God. I’ll never forget her. 

And so yesterday,  I raced to the Glendale fire…like I had so many times…to hurricanes, mass shootings and a tsunami’s wake. I’m reminded of my childhood and my little orange bicycle.  And getting there …first!