Sam Greenawalt, This Is Your Life

For the Sam Greenawalt family in the Detroit exurb of Birmingham, Thanksgiving night brought an eye-opening confrontation. Dad, 41, was shown to be a man whose achievement of wealth, a handsome house and the senior vice presidency of a bank could not mask "the first faint shudder of discontent." His wife Jane, 39, was told that though she had won "her prince [and] her castle . . . she has found herself not living happily ever after." The three children, aged ten to 14, got the idea that their active, clubby mother might be neglecting them. The family learned that the eldest child, Sheri, considered it "a good possibility" that she would try drugs.

Perhaps most troubling of all, these judgments and revelations were shared with millions of other U.S. families. They were intoned by Correspondent Charles Kuralt on a CBS Reports documentary titled . . . But What If the Dream Comes True? The script, tough but at times preachy and redundant, gave an engrossing account of Americans' growing malaise over the traditional ethic of success and competition. The show's aftermath in Birmingham was an equally engrossing example of Americans' malaise over the magnifying eye of television.

Uneasy Neighbors. Within 15 minutes after the Greenawalts settled down together to watch the show on their home set, their phone began to ring with crank calls. By the next day they had logged 100 whisperers, screamers and name callers. On the third day the hate mail began to come in. "Watch out for your kids," warned one letter.

Although the Greenawalts' friends and relatives professed themselves generally pleased with the intimate documentary, several neighbors were uneasy. Some thought that the CBS producer had quite obviously come to town with a preconceived story line and would not leave until he had footage proving, as one said, that "if you're rich, you're unhappy." At Greenawalt's bank, most of his colleagues must have been titillated to find out that office pressures led their senior vice president to "actually break a sweat" by 11 a.m. But the president of the bank steadfastly refused to make any comment whatever.

Proud Motive. The Greenawalts had agreed to let a CBS crew invade their privacy for a four-month period because they were proud of their way of life. "I thought that the way I feel and the things I do are basically good," says Sam. Afterward they insisted that the results were accurate, but admitted to having reservations. Mom wished "that the quality of my relationship with my children had been more brought out so they could see what kind of a person I really am."

Sheri, pointing out that ten months had elapsed since the filming, said, "I made a fool of myself talking about drugs. Now that I'm in high school, 1 know I won't take them." Dad, besides being disturbed by the phone calls and mail, believed that his family had been made to look "pretty materialistic." All in all, would he do it again? No--"at least not right away."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.