Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [106]
Harry Reasoner
Harry Reasoner was one of the original correspondents on 60 Minutes when it first aired in 1968. He retired in 1991.
In 1961 CBS asked me to write a show for Harry. We’d never met so I called him and suggested we talk first. He put me off. He wasn’t unfriendly, he just wasn’t interested in talking about it. Harry’s like that.
Writing for other people on television, I learned something. I learned that its hard to write for someone who couldn’t do it without you and easy to write for someone who doesn’t need you. Harry was always easy to write for.
And you could ask Harry. There are people who know things and people who don’t know anything. Harry knows things. He’s an omnivorous reader with a great memory. He’s got a lot in his head . . . some of which he’d be better off without, of course.
Once I saw someone come to him with a blank map of Africa . . . just the outline of the countries. Harry sat down, looked at it and filled in the names of all fifty-two African countries.
Harry Reasoner’s my best friend. Of the ten people I say that about, Harry’s the most complicated and the hardest to be best friends with. He’s worth the trouble.
People wonder why he’s leaving. Harry’s leaving CBS because he never really liked to work. It made him mad when anyone suggested he was lazy. He’s not lazy but, of all the people doing this kind of work,
With Harry Reasoner, on location in California shooting the ABC documentary “A Bird’s Eye View of California”
Harry enjoyed actually doing it the least. Mike Wallace loves to work. Harry hates it.
In 1979 I questioned the overuse of the word “superstar.” I tried to say who was and who was not a real superstar.
A superstar is always a person who has something more than skill and talent that attracts the rest of us to him. In this business, Walter Cronkite’s a superstar. Ten years ago, I said that of the four correspondents on 60 Minutes, two of them were and two of them were not.
For months after that people asked me who I thought the two superstars were. I never said, of course, but I can tell you now. Harry Reasoner was one.
A Best Friend 233
With Walter Cronkite on his boat in Martha’s Vineyard
A Best Friend
How many really good friends do you have? If you’re lucky, you have two or maybe three.
Walter Cronkite was a really good friend of mine—a best friend. I didn’t just know Walter well, I didn’t respect him, I didn’t revere him—I just liked him a lot. We were often together and it was easy. We didn’t have to think of things to talk about—things to talk about just came to us naturally.
I was with Walter recently and we didn’t talk much because neither of us had much to say. You can do that with good friends too.
Walter and I met in London in 1942.
And I suppose we’ve been together a thousand times from then until now. It’s one of those numbers in your life that you can’t count.
I’ve been proud over the years to see Walter become not just one of the best-known people on television but one of the best-known people in the whole world of people. He was proud of me, too, and there’s no better feeling in life than that. I wouldn’t trade Walter Cronkite liking me for just about anything I’ve ever had.
The Flat Earth in Kansas
In 1999 the Kansas Board of Education assured itself a place in the annals of ignorance by decreeing that Darwin’s theory of evolution be removed from the state’s school curriculum. It seems likely that board members, looking out their windows at their state’s broad plains, might also conclude that the Earth is flat.
It helps restore my faith in the intelligence and good sense of the people of Kansas to know that their decision was reversed two years later.
One of the pleasures of our country house is the recurring memory it evokes of Margie’s father, a doctor whose home it was. He was a self-educated intellectual who went from high school to medical college and never lost his fascination with knowledge. On either side of the fireplace in the living room, the bookcases are filled with