The Last of His Kind

There was a brain behind that handsome face and I was thankful to have such an erudite, educated person on one of the three major networks. Dan was earthy, Tom was plainspoken, and Peter was James Bond. We saw him all over the globe, wearing a trench coat or a safari jacket and his peers say he had one of the best Rolo-Dexes in town.

But beyond his class and style, he seemed to care very much that we understood the often incomprehensible stories around the world. His personal library was said to be vast and varied.

He never graduated from high school. He smoked for a very long time. He was married four times. He could be very tough on his colleagues. And when he covered the millenium celebrations, he nearly broke down crying while saluting the production team who helped him to cover them (I chalked it up to sleep deprivation).

Television is a much cheaper place nowadays and we will be hard pressed to find a place in it for the kind of intelligence and depth Peter Jennings had. But for the forty years that Peter Jennings spent trying to learn about this complex world and explain it to all of us, I want to honor him on my blog.