Ridin' the Storm Out with Bob Hager, NBC News

Robert Hager - Newsman & Family Man

You've seen the dashing Bob Hager on NBC since the late 1960's.  He covered Vietnam and the Palestinian atrocity at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  43 years ago today he was in lock-up, arrested in Chicago while covering the protests at the Democratic National Convention.

Over time, Bob developed a couple of specialized beats, notably Air Disasters (TWA 800, Pan Am 103, ...) and Weather Disasters.  Every year, when NBC changed its new anchor set and logo, Bob would be issued a new company windbreaker to wear on camera as wind, waves and rain battered the coastline somewhere, or as volunteers picked through tornado wreckage.

Well, in 1981, I dated Bob and wife Honey's daughter for several months.  She and I had a great time and once made a trip north, stopping in Westport to visit her old home (and to make a furtive dash up the driveway of neighbor Mary Travers).  This Hager house - and all others the itinerant newsman and his family had inhabited - were lovingly recreated as scale models (Bob had impressive skill as a woodworking hobbyist), and linked by a string of Christmas lights in a village scene that the Hager family would set up each year.  An entire town center made up of their past homes.  I'm a sentimentalist and have never seen a similarly sweet scene, anywhere.

Buck Henry: "Mr. Leech"

Jessica: Golden Girl

My favorite inside-NBC News story that came from Bob (via his lovely daughter who observed the tableaux as a teenager at the time) is of bow-tied old Irving R. Levine chasing the ill-fated but quite gorgeous Jessica Savitch around the Hager living room during a cocktail party, with fingers a-pinching (a bit like Buck Henry coming after Mary Woronov in "Eating Raoul," I always liked to imagine).

With Irene bearing down on the east coast, let's salute Bob Hager, NBC Newsman Emeritus.

Airborne with Magic Johnson

Magic in the Air: Head to head w/MJ

I Got the Magic Stick!
 May, 1996. Following a grueling E-3 show, my boss and I are waiting to board a commuter flight from LAX - SFO for meetings with software developers, when there in the conjoined boarding area is The Magic man, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, - in line to board at the very next gate.

Yes, he'd made the announcement of his HIV condition about 5 years earlier and was now retired, but even out of uniform to see that face, and that smile, was like a radiant blast of L.A. sunshine.

Magic Johnson: A Love Supreme

My boss had lamented in the cab that she didn't make time to get a picture taken with Sonic the Hedgehog at the SEGA booth, for her kids, so I urged her to hit up Magic for the goods. "Drive for the lane, shoot and score an autograph!" I pushed, so she'd have a trophy for her young son, a wild NBA fan. No NBA captain, she mustered a Hello, but didn't have the guts to request an autograph

Yours truly was less bold than that, just staring slack-jawed at the Magic Man.  He boarded his flight, and that was that....

I've always been a Celtics fan.

But I will not deny the incredible natural talent, the on-court leadership, and the warm personal appeal of this giant.

Roger Mudd and the Fannie Mae Kerfuffle

Newsman Mudd

One afternoon in 2005, on the sidelines at Washington Episcopal School in Bethesda, MD, I met Roger Mudd - star CBS correspondent throughout the 1960's and 1970's, and subsequently host, co-host or contributor to NBC News, Meet the Press, and McNeil Lehrer Newshour.  I knew Roger's son Matt because our daughters were lacrosse teammates and playing against WES that day.

Matt greeted me, introduced me to Dad, and we enjoyed a few moments of sunshine before I told Matt "I just heard your brother on the radio as I was driving here!"   Roger's ears perked up: "How did he do?"  "Fine - they didn't lay a glove on him!"

Dan Mudd: Taught me Laddered T-Bills and Mark-to-Market

At the time - that very day in fact - older son Dan, then the C.O.O. in Franklin D. Raines' Fannie Mae, had spent 2 hours testifying before a senate committee regarding improprieties at FNMA.  These problems, from which Dan himself emerged wholly intact, did reveal substantial wrongdoing by Raines and CFO Tim Howard, in what would be preamble to the unraveling of Fannie Mae as a structural support to the housing and financial markets in 2008 (see Reckless Endangerment for a superb account).

Dan too had kids at the school, and he and I served for 4 years together on the Budget & Finance committee for the small ($6 MM annual budget) operation.  A USMC vet,  he patiently taught me some simple principles and terms of art in the course of our work together.  On one occasion, attending a winter fundraiser together, Dan (well, his driver) jumped the dead battery in my Isuzu Trooper.  Today, Dan is CEO of Fortress Investments.  And today Fannie Mae is asking the U.S. Treasury (that is, you and me) for another $5.1 BB in protection against the consequences of its business decisions.

Of my exchange with Roger regarding Dan, I'll say it was funny to share the news I'd just consumed retail, from NPR, with this giant of journalism, but satisfying to learn he'd suffer this fool gladly, and I guess that he needs to source his facts like anyone else, no matter how dubious the source.  In this case, he was able to get corroboration later - not only from other news sources and intermediaries, but likely direct from the subject.

Roger Mudd at 83 continues to consult on the presentation of documentary programming and and to share historical, political and ethical context on the History Channel.  He has also generously endowed a center for Ethics study at Washington & Lee University in Virginia.  And he's a devoted grand-dad who likes a good lacrosse game once in a while....