How I Got It

By Tom Brokaw As told to Laura Koss-Feder

My "aha" moment stretched over a little period of time, from the spring of 1960 through the rest of that year. A professor named Bill Farber, who was the head of the political-science department at the University of South Dakota, called me to dinner at his house when I was a sophomore. I had, to put it euphemistically, compiled an undistinguished record personally and academically. I was not getting good grades. I was spending a lot of time on the beer and coed circuit. Farber said, "I want you to drop out of school and get this out of your system. You're not doing us any good; you're not doing yourself any good. You're a big disappointment to your friends and family. Come back when you can do everybody some good."

I worked at a radio station that summer in western South Dakota. In the fall, I returned to my hometown of Yankton, doing odd jobs around town and trying to figure out what to do next. My parents were pretty upset with me. One morning my mother was watching the Today show, and the local newscaster cut in from a TV station 60 miles away. My mother said, "You're better than he is. Why don't you try and get that job?" I arranged for an interview, and shortly I was hired as a staff announcer, noon news anchor and weekend weatherman for $75 a week. I was to start in January.

Before that, I was at home during the epic 1960 election campaign between Nixon and Kennedy. I was always a political junkie. On election night I stayed up until 8 o'clock in the morning in my parents' house, watching the election returns with Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Sander Vanocur and John Chancellor. It was a seminal moment in broadcast journalism. Suddenly, all across America, the political process was actually brought into your living room. These dashing correspondents were able to make a living at this, covering campaigns and traveling the world. I was a pretty good writer and loved politics. I thought, "That's what I'd like to do--be a network correspondent." But to make that happen, I realized that I would have to go back to school and get my act together. So I went to Farber and said, "I'd like to come back. I get it."

There were other pivotal times. In 1965, after I'd held anchorman jobs in Omaha, Neb., and Atlanta, NBC offered me a job in the Los Angeles bureau. I flew out to L.A., looked around and decided I really wanted to be a Washington correspondent. I turned down the offer. A few months later, they upped the ante, and it was just too good to resist. I took the job in L.A.

It was a heady time. I was spending my days covering Pat Brown's and Ronald Reagan's campaigns for Governor, the free-speech movement in Berkeley, the continuing tensions in Watts. The hours were long, but I had a blue Mustang with a radiophone to race from story to story, and I was just 26 years old.

At the end of our first week in California, my wife Meredith and I went to dinner in Santa Monica. It was a moonlit night. Afterward, we walked out along the beach, and Meredith kicked off her shoes. Wading in the Pacific Ocean was so alien to our environment when we were growing up in South Dakota. I vividly remember looking at her--this beautiful young woman walking in the surf--and thinking, "This is really something special. Our lives have changed, and they will never be the same." And they certainly never have been. --As told to Laura Koss-Feder