Obituary: Peter Jennings

As all of the obituaries repeatedly point out, Peter Jennings did not graduate from high school. I did, albeit an embarrassing one, and college too, but at 34, I haven’t accomplished nearly what he had by my age. It’s disconcerting to hear all the preaching about how this proves you should go to college, not rush out immediately towards your success. The evidence of his life would suggest the opposite, no? In the same way that his early death of lung cancer would support the more relevant reminder not to smoke. As I leave my lucrative job for a life of artistic penury, I am trying to take a leaf from his and all books which suggest that you will regret not pursuing what you want.

A late college graduate, I moved to New York a few months after graduation at the ripe old age of 25. I made the jump with the meager assistance of my just above minimum wage college job at Eastern Mountain Sports, a job for which I was stupendously unqualified. The store offered less preppy stylish clothing and more climbing gear than L.L. Bean but in all other particulars it was the brick and mortar version of that venerable New England institution. I have no idea why they hired me except that I probably interviewed well: I faked some of it based on the insider information fed me by a much more qualified outdoorswoman already working there and blustered through the rest with that misplaced confidence common to the young and entitled. I certainly did not specify that I do not hike, camp or climb, the three primary foci of EMS’s business. I knew nothing about Gore Tex, sleeping bags, the Adirondack Trail or canoes, nor did I have any interest in learning about them beyond what was absolutely required to get paid for my job. Because the store was staffed by local college students and was improbably located in an upscale, well-groomed, well-gardened outdoor mall, this lack of interest and knowledge was not a deal breaker. The clientele was as under-educated about our products as I was and my co-workers were young enough to keep me entertained. I stayed for two years before making the leap to Manhattan after graduation.

The New York store was a different matter. It was staffed by a more typical EMS crew of die-hard, bitter-but-I-gotta-work-somewhere rock climbers and disappointed and often not too bright retail management aspirants. It was also located just north of Columbus Circle, a half block off Broadway on a dark sidestreet that smelled powerfully of urine. It was in a between world that wasn’t quite on the park, wasn’t quite midtown and wasn’t yet the Upper West Side. It was in a no-identity hinterland of fading tourism north of Times Square and was not quite included in Lincoln Center’s southward circle of affluence. There was nowhere to get lunch, no cafes to hang out in and there was no sun. Strangely though, the store’s utterly depressing location was ideal for a certain clientele, namely the network stars who worked at the West Side television studios and the celebrities who lived or stayed along the park. Harry Belafonte came in for fleece socks. Carly Simon stopped by for ski gloves. I helped outfit Brad Pitt with rough weather gear for a movie shoot. Harry Smith bought a fishing vest for a reporting assignment in the Middle East. (He was with CBS This Morning at that point, so it was likely a hummus story rather than a political one, but you still need a lot of pockets to travel well.)

And, towards the end of my tenure there, I met Peter Jennings. He was looking for a ski jacket for his daughter and needed a model. Although I’m several years older than she, he assured me I was about her size and asked me to try on this one, then that one. He was slightly aloof, the way famous people sometimes are, polite and so familiar of face as to be almost unrecognizably recognizable. I was not an evening news watcher except when staying with my grandmother. She preferred Dan Rather. Rather’s up and down inflections annoyed me and I leaned towards Brokaw’s squinting. Jennings’ mobile eyebrows had never captured my fancy. (These are not the substantive opinions being detailed by all who knew him!)

After that first runway session in the aisles of EMS, I started watching World News Tonight more closely. I didn’t enjoy the evening news – I was raised on NPR and its longer format – but, on closer inspection, I liked Jennings himself. He was the most circumspect. Brokaw’s blurry diction got on my nerves and my allegiance shifted to the Canadian. I suppose I knew it then but had forgotten until yesterday that Jennings was Canadian, which would explain the attraction. I’ve always liked Canadians. In an interview on Fresh Air, Jennings diagnosed the American-Canadian divide as the difference between power and influence. Americans have a sense of the former, Canadians the latter. I would have liked to tell him that I prefer the latter myself but he did not strike me as a man accustomed to personal revelation.

Talking to him, he had an elusive quality that I’ve found in other serious people. He felt simultaneously out of reach and personable, engaged because he had an interested mind but wary because he was so famous. He was wry, the way he always seemed on the news when he dropped his chin slightly and looked up through the camera at the end of the broadcast. He had the effect of a parent or mentor: I did not want to seem foolish with him and would like to do better for him. I am sorry he is gone and wish there were more people like him not just in the media but anywhere. Perhaps I’ll check in Canada.