From a cluttered corner at CBS headquarters in New York, Andy Rooney sips day-old coffee from a plastic Harris Tweed mug and grumbles about his “over­night” success. It took 64 years to get here, and like money, it’s “a pain in the tail,” he insists. It cramps his style when he meanders through hardware stores, is a source of embarrassment down at the lunch counter and sometimes causes him to miss the bus to work.

“A writer should be sitting over in the corner watching the dance and not be out there dancing,” he muses. “I’m not too keen about my recent well-knownness; I don’t han­dle it very well. If somebody comes up to me on the street and says, ‘Hey, I like your stuff,’ well, I can’t hate that. But it never stops there. Pretty soon he wants to be my best friend. I tend to be rude to people like that.”

He comes by his crustiness natu­rally. He’s one of the last of the trench-coat journalists who covered the Big War—World War II—for the print media. He was Sergeant Rooney then, a veteran of several bombing missions and the Stars and Stripes reporter who landed on Nor­mandy Beach four days after D-Day to document the invasion of France. Hardly a suave TV personality in the Dan Rather-Peter Jennings tra­dition, he looks more like a preppy leprechaun with John L. Lewis eye­brows and a fondness for growling at strangers. His bite has earned him a reputation as CBS News’ resident curmudgeon, but his bark is more fun than fact. During a recent 60-minute interview with the SatEve Post, he was downright hospitable as he shared insights, the day-old coffee and all the comforts of his in­famously cluttered nest.

“Sit down, sit down,” he urged, beckoning to a black vinyl chair that had a suspiciously gimpy leg. I sat, and the leg gave way and sent me flailing toward a floor strewn with size 8′/2 EEE shoes, maps destined someday for a wall and a family portrait of somebody else’s family.

“I’ve got to fix this chair,” he muttered resolutely from a squat position as he examined the now splintered leg.

He means it. An avowed do-it-himselfer, he prefers to fend for himself and refutes the notion that celebrity status translates into clout. Forget the limousines, the house on Long Island, the cadre of secretaries poised to take a letter. He commutes daily from Connecticut via train and bus, pecks out his own correspon­dence on an Underwood typewriter three years older than he is, builds furniture and bakes bread. He and wife Marguerite still live in the same house where their four children grew up.

“We paid $29,500 for it, and I have no intention of moving out,” he says.

His home away from home—the modest cubicle in the CBS building on West 57th Street—has a decided­ly less permanent air to it. A hodge­podge of books are stacked every which way on shelves behind his desk and beg to be arranged. A gold-colored statuette, representing some lofty award for past accom­plishments, reclines on its backside atop the books and close to a large box labeled simply “Jane’s stuff.” Pictures, yet to be hung, lean against a sway-backed couch.

“Just move in?” I ask.

He nods affirmatively and adds: “Ten years ago.”

The decor is eclectic—a function­al jumble of treasures that smacks of the owner. Lampshades tilt uniformly off-center, mounds of paper threaten to obscure the desk; an LBJ-Lady Bird commemorative plate is tacked to the wall, and a grouping of black-and-white Holly­wood publicity pictures invite visi­tors to test their knowledge of film trivia. But it’s no contest. Rooney explains the “celebrities” are ac­tually Columbia Studio’s rejects— starlets who didn’t make it big in show biz.

To this unlikely haven comes a network-news crew each week to tape “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney,” the wildly successful p.s. to television’s top-ranked show, “60 Minutes.” The humorous commen­tary has earned two Emmys since becoming a permanent feature of the show in September 1978. And that’s not bad for a low-budget operation.

“I don’t move a thing,” says Rooney. “It’s been a strange union problem because they say we’ve got to have a set decorator. But we don’t have a set. We shoot right in here. See that microphone? It runs into Bob Forte’s editing room. Believe me, we don’t fuss with this thing. Sometimes the cameraman will say there are too many white papers on the desk—causes a glare—so I toss some yellow paper on top and say, ‘Is this better?’ Sure, we make con­cessions; but it’s very homemade. Remarkably homemade.”

For the show Rooney generally sits at his desk in front of the jammed bookshelves and to the right of LB J and Lady Bird. He peers over horn-rimmed half-glasses and addresses issues close to home, wherever home may be. Viewers sel­dom notice the “set” since his words command their full attention. He’s the folksy philosopher who un derstands little things. He manages to say what others only feel, and this ability has established a kinship with “60 Minutes” aficionados. Often sage, sometimes silly, always suc­cinct, his messages zing in on truths common to everyone. He can evoke chuckles when he sounds off on de­signer jeans and tears when he com­ments on the pain of growing old. The most common topics become special under his treatment, and his way with words has swelled the ranks of Rooney followers to such proportions that a brief Sunday-evening fix of his humor just isn’t enough. Fans have turned in in­creasing numbers to his three-times-weekly newspaper column—now syndicated in 324 publications—and to his books, the most recent, And More by Andy Rooney, a bona fide best seller of 1 million copies in hardback and 2 million in paper­back. Still, it’s television exposure that has brought about the star status and the high visibility he finds so disagreeable.

“I’m irritated that some people think I only got successful when I did ’60 Minutes.’ I was doing things I was proud of 20 years ago,” he grumbles. “Fame is an overrated quality. I don’t think nearly as high­ly of well-known people as I did before I was one. And money. It’s a lot like fame. Overrated. Oh, I en­joy having $150 in my pocket in­stead of $32 or $19, but that’s all. Money is a pain in the tail. I’m no good with it—I don’t know what to do with it.”

Unbelievable? Not so, says Mr. Rooney, although he concedes per­haps once fame wasn’t quite as dis­tasteful as it is today.

“I did a piece once called ‘Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington’ about seven or eight years ago,” he re­calls. “It was a good piece—an hour long. I remember the next morning a guy came up to me at the bus stop and said he had seen the show and had really liked it. I was pleased. That was about the last time I was pleased.”

His impatience with fame is caused partly by his inability to understand why he deserves it. He refutes all claims that he’s better than Buchwald, more wry than Rog­ers or in the same genre as Menken, Twain or Thurber.

“That’s  baloney. Buchwald  is funnier than I am; Menken and Twain were so much smarter. No, I reject that. I’ll never last as they have,” he protests. “What I do is easy; I can’t believe it’s special or different. But it’s a delight—the most fun I have. I enjoy making it clear to people that we are so basi­cally the same for all our differ­ences. I can’t get over the fact that there is a common thread that runs through all of us. We share so many characteristics. It makes the world a little less lonely place to be, and I like that feeling.”

His talent for tugging at the com­mon thread comes from his ability to totally tune into his subject. Heightened perception, he calls it, and it’s available on command. He explains that when he has to write a column or commentary, he merely turns up his tuner and grabs hold of something he might otherwise over­look. He looks at the subject head-on and dissects it. When the writing is done, the antennae retract and he reverts to being a tourist.

If this perception is a natural gift, it’s been carefully honed by the down-home Hoosier, Borge was veddy sophisticated, Levinson was folksy Jewish and Godfrey was, well, just Godfrey.

“Writing for those guys was a ter­rific lesson. I’ve probably borrowed something from all of them. They were tough; there was a lot of argu­ing. It was highly competitive get­ting your stuff into the mono­logues,” he admits. “There’s no writing more precise than the kind that has to provoke laughter. You know you’re hitting people when they laugh. It has to pay off, and the positioning of words is so important in triggering it.”

Joke writing led to collaboration with Harry Reasoner on several CBS News specials. Rooney pro­vided the words and Reasoner added the voice. Not until he joined the Public Broadcasting Service’s “The Great American Dream Ma­chine” did Rooney actually go on camera himself. Afterward, he was contacted by an advertising-agency talent scout who wanted him to nar­rate a headache-remedy commer­cial. That told him a lot about his voice, he quips.

He returned to CBS, this time to both write and narrate such on-the-air efforts as “Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner” (he added 14 pounds by the end of the assignment), “Mr. Rooney Goes to Work” and an oc­casional political commentary. Viewers related to his less-than-perfect physique (a pudgy 5′ 9″), his appearance (rumpled) and his voice (restrained whine). When the duel­ing duo of Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick went on vacation from “60 Minutes” in the summer of 1978, Rooney was tabbed as the replacement. The temporary assign­ment became permanent the next year, leaving him little time for the longer, more in-depth stories he had always enjoyed.

“I miss reporting a lot,” he ad­mits. “But the fact is, I have be­come more valuable to myself and everyone else by doing more writing and less reporting.”

He stops, props his 8 1/2 EEEs up on his desk and engages in a little pipe dream: “You know what I’d really love to do?” he asks. “I’d like to throw myself into writing and reporting for Charlie Kuralt. I’d like to just give him my stuff. For one thing, he does things better than almost anyone in the business. Then I could slip back into anonymity. I’m telling you, it wouldn’t bother meat all.”

He loves the language and the agony of arranging and rearranging words, the shaking-out of a piece of writing until nothing remains except the emotion that propels it forward and makes it reach out and touch the reader or listener. The creative process is tough, causing him to rant, wring his hands and pace as his assistant Jane Bradford reads, edits and passes judgment.

“Jane checks everything I do. If I spell my own name she checks and makes sure it’s all right. She drives me crazy, but she’s very good. I make a lot of mistakes, and she keeps me from making a fool of my­self. The other day I was desperate to get my column done. I finally finished it and gave it to her to read, and she said it just wasn’t good enough. God, I knew she was right. I had to sit down and do it over.”

Even a bit of writing scrutinized and passed into print is not immune to Rooney’s self-criticism.

“I look at things I wrote ten years ago and think, ‘My gosh, how could I have done that?’ Then I look at things I wrote last year and think, ‘How could I have done thafl When am I going to grow up?’ ”

He claims he has a particularly difficult time ending things well, and that holds true not only for his writing but for his other passion, woodworking, as well. Both require patience—not his long suit.

“Actually, it’s a real shortcoming of mine. I guess I’ve gotten better at it in my column, but I’m a big woodworker and I’ve never been able to finish furniture very well, either. I’m interested in the idea of forming a table or a chair or a cab­inet, but then I don’t have the pa­tience to finish it the way I should.”

So immersed is he with his voca­tion—writing—and his avocation— woodworking—that he often de­scribes one in terms of the other. A particularly tough script is called “a real cabinetmakers’s job of writing.” His profession under­writes his passion, and his only splurge since he became a TV celebrity has been a $2,700 power saw. He used it to build, from scratch, a free-standing writing room at the family vacation com­pound in upstate New York. Week­ends from May to October are spent at the New York “cottage,” which is a sprawling, white colonial estate with two outbuildings—one for writing and another for woodwork­ing. From the first he churns out columns and scripts; from the sec­ond come tables and sideboards.

“My kids have a lot of my fur­niture in their houses. Sometimes I make it faster than anyone wants it. I’m not a natural woodworker, but I use good wood and have pretty good ideas. Boy, you talk about being self-taught. When I built my writing room I couldn’t get over how many mistakes I made. I fell off a ladder at one point, and that stopped con­struction for about a month.”

In many respects he’s self-taught in his writing craft, too. His ideas are good, his instincts are on target and if the words feel right to him, chances are he’s succeeded in build­ing a thought people can relate to. He takes care in choosing his topics and is particularly wary of subjects that might amuse the cosmopolitan folks of New York but elude resi­dents of rural America. He frets that a recent piece on the irritations of air travel only touched a small segment of his audience. He rejects the suggestion by a CBS coworker to use telephone answering machines as the object of an upcoming dia­tribe. “How many viewers have answering machines?” he asks.

He stays in touch with his audi­ence by living the normal life he champions. He avoids posh parties and the social set in an effort to pro­tect his averageness. At a time when TV programming is determined by ratings and demographic studies, he refuses to be influenced by scientific data. Don’t burden him with the number of house­holds tuned to CBS at 7 p.m. on Sundays. Don’t tell him which geographic areas of the country appreciate his humor most or which pock­ets of the population prefer a Lawrence Welk rerun.

“That’s the road to death,” he says of market studies. “It’s like trying to understand flight by dissect­ing the entrails of a robin. I would never study the num­bers. A good pilot knows how it feels to fly right.”

And after more than 40 years in the business, he’s flying higher than ever. He’s earned his stripes with a flight plan that has proved to be impeccable: From his cluttered vantage point, he looks out at the dancers and simply wings it.

From Our Archives: Sixty Minutes With Andy Rooney The Saturday Evening Post

Dancing is also just plain fun. “It’s the most joyful way for me to get my exercise, get my heart rate up, and get the endorphins I crave,” says actress Jennifer Grey, who has done as much for dancing as it has done for her. As costar of the 1987 hit film Dirty Dancing, she motivated millions to head for the ballroom. Last year she had a similar impact when she earned top honors on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) and proved, at age 50, that it’s never too late to strap on 4-inch heels and out-perform competitors 20 years her junior.

“Dancing takes me out of my busy monkey mind and dumps me in a physical space where I can be free from thinking,” says the actress. “It’s the best way for me to feel connected and alive. I take one dance class every week, but it’s not enough. I want to be able to do it every day.”

Although ballroom dancing has never lacked for fans, its soaring popularity has certainly been boosted by shows like DWTS and its FOX counterpart, So You Think You Can Dance. Statistics confirm that Americans are giving ballroom dancing another whirl.

“People are definitely getting off their sofas and starting to dance again,” emphasizes Carrie Ann Inaba, one of DWTS’s three professional judges. “During our first season on television people would come up to me on the street and say, ‘I watch the show every week.’ By the time the second season rolled around they were saying, ‘I’m talking my husband into getting into a dance class.’ Now they’re telling me, ‘We’re taking lessons and having a ball!’”

The least likely folks are taking up dance these days. Donna Thomas, 65, was raised in a conservative church and graduated from a college that frowned on anything that resembled what it categorized as “rhythmic activity.” Yet two years after becoming a widow, Donna summoned her courage, walked into a studio near her Springboro, Ohio, home, and announced, “I want to dance.”

It changed her life. “I needed to be with people,” she recalls. “I figured I had a choice: either withdraw and stay in my shell or step out and try something new.” The “something new” included mastering the waltz, samba, cha-cha-cha, and jive. Her timing—on the dance floor and off—was perfect. At home, she was learning to operate solo and make all the decisions that she and her husband used to make jointly. In the studio, she felt the pressure ease and the responsibility shift as she became part of a team again. “I didn’t have to be in charge,” she says. “All I had to do was follow my partner’s cues and react to the music. That lifted my spirits.”

People are also dancing in the least likely places. One of the most colorful offshoots of the trend is the “flash mob,” best described as a spontaneous outbreak of dancing in very public settings such as shopping malls, school cafeterias, hotel lobbies, food courts, and train stations.

J.R. Martinez and Karina Smirnoff were crowned "Dancing with the Stars" champions on November 22, 2011. Photo courtesy of ABC/ADAM TAYLOR)

Participants, alerted to a planned flash mob through social media, congregate and wait for their cue. “People are just milling around when all of a sudden one or two start dancing,” explains Angela Prince, a spokesperson for USA Dance. Others join in and before long—in a flash, you might say—everyone’s toes are tapping, hips are swiveling, and bodies are gyrating. It’s as if one were in the center of a Broadway musical. “I remember being on a Caribbean cruise when a couple of passengers started a flash mob while we were eating dinner,” recalls Prince. “Everyone, including waiters and crew, caught the spirit and formed a conga line of about 300 people that snaked its way around the entire dining room.”

Although Prince agrees that shows such as DWTS have encouraged the ballroom craze, she credits other factors as well. “Dancing seems to experience a bump in popularity after events that change our lives,” she says, using the years following World War I and II, Vietnam, and 9/11 as examples. “Music is great therapy, and dancing gives people the opportunity to come together.”

Technology also may have a hand in the revival. Mary Murphy, a studio owner and frequent choreographer and judge on So You Think You Can Dance, says dancing provides a degree of human contact that is sorely missing since people have come to rely on the Internet as their primary mode of interaction. She works with elementary and middle school students to introduce them to what she calls the language of dance. “Some of the kids come kicking and screaming into the classes, but teachers tell me that they see positive changes within a few weeks.”

The idea of a young couple joining hands as the boy guides his partner and the girl follows his lead, is certainly part of the appeal. Dancing allows young people to communicate without the pressure of finding the right words. “Kids who have behavior problems naturally calm down and find new ways to express themselves,” says Murphy.

When it comes to the therapeutic benefits of dancing, Murphy can speak from first-hand experience. She underwent treatment for thyroid cancer a year ago and faced the possibility of losing her ability to talk. Today she is cancer-free and as exuberant as ever. She used dancing to help prepare for surgery, and she integrated it into her recuperation regimen. “Getting that diagnosis and hearing the word cancer was the one time in my life I just wanted to shut down and have a major pity party, which I did for a couple of days,” she admits. “Then I decided I absolutely had to keep my body moving. So I added a lot of activities to my pre-surgery program to increase my lung capacity. I did yoga, pilates, and dance exercises every day. I wanted to be in the healthiest condition possible.”

Her plan worked. She sailed through the operation and the recovery that followed. The reason? “I absolutely believe it was because of dance.”

Fans of the two hit TV dance shows can attest to similar dramatic effects that dancing has had on several of the competitors. “Kirstie Alley immediately comes to mind,” says Inaba. Dubbed “the incredible shrinking Kirstie” because of the weight she lost during Season 10 of DWTS, Alley decided to wear the same costume on the show’s finale as she wore for the initial competitive round. This proved to be a challenge for the wardrobe staff because the dress had to be downsized by 38 inches. The combination of a healthy diet and rigorous dancing had caused her to lose almost 100 pounds.

“A lot of times our self esteem is determined by the shape we’re in and how good we feel about ourselves,” says Inaba. “Dancing brings you back to a place where you feel physically confident about your body because you’re strong again. Your core muscles are working; you’re in shape; and you’re in tune with your body. I watched Kirstie rediscover her confidence last season.”

Dancing also can replenish a zest for life. Donna Thomas, the conservative-turned-dance-enthusiast, certainly discovered this when she was still newly widowed and stepped out of her comfort zone to sign up for ballroom lessons back in Ohio. Over a period of time, she became so engaged in dancing that she was a regular at Friday night dance parties, and her skill level rose to the point where her instructors encouraged her to enter competitions. Although she no longer competes, she still has the sassy black dress and high heels that she wore when performing, and somewhere there’s a scrapbook of photos, certificates, and ribbons. Her favorite memory, though, doesn’t involve winning prizes or gaining recognition. It’s more personal. “I remember the night I invited my kids to attend a dance with me,” she recalls, with a laugh. “You should have seen their faces! They were just so surprised at how good I was!”

America Goes Dance Crazy! The Saturday Evening Post

The show business thing worked out, of course. She debuted as Happy Hotpoint, the elf in dozens of TV appliance commercials. After appearances on several TV series, Moore hit it big as the beautiful suburban housewife, Laura, on The Dick Van Dyke Show and the perky 30-something single woman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, not to mention stage, feature film, and made-for-television work that garnered her seven Emmy Awards, a Tony, and an Oscar nomination, among many other accolades. Only recently, when she sat down to write Growing Up Again, did she regret ignoring her mom. “I don’t know how to use a computer or do any of that,” she admits, so she persevered with a supply of pencils and legal pads, and wrote the book longhand.

Unlike her 1995 autobiography, After All, her second book is less about life as an award-winning actress and more about living with diabetes. All the proceeds are earmarked for the

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), an organization she serves as international chairman. “I felt there was a need for a book like this,” she says. “I didn’t want to lecture, but I wanted to communicate that I have shared the same feelings and experiences that other diabetics have. I wanted them to know that things get better when we’re disciplined and do our part in managing the disease.”

But she hasn’t always practiced what she teaches. In her book, she describes that awful day, almost 40 years ago, when she received two pieces of life-changing news. First, she had lost the baby she was carrying, and second, lab tests revealed that she had type 1 diabetes. In a childlike act of rebellion against the rules that accompanied the diagnosis, she left the hospital and promptly treated herself to a box of glazed doughnuts. Years would pass before she realized she had to grow up — again — and take control of her diabetes, not let it control her. Only then did she kick her three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, overcome her addiction to alcohol, and begin to follow a balanced diet and exercise regimen.

Although her disease has affected her vision and forced her to the sidelines of the dance floor that she once dominated, she refuses to indulge in self-pity. “Everybody on earth can ask, ‘why me?’ about something or other,” she insists. “It doesn’t do any good.

No one is immune to heartache, pain, and disappointments. Sometimes we can make things better by helping other people. I’ve come to realize the importance of that as I’ve grown up this second time. I want to speak out and be as helpful as I can be.”

She works tirelessly on behalf of JDRF, especially in November, American Diabetes Month and relies on the encouragement of her husband, Dr. Robert Levine, a cardiologist 18 years her junior. The two met in a New York emergency room where he treated her mother, and they have been a couple ever since. Their age difference is not an issue, she says. For her part, she’s proud of Robert’s medical expertise but she’s confident that she can hold her own when the topic is diabetes.

“He’s wonderful,” she says of the man she calls her “younger suitor” in her new book’s dedication. “He’s very patient with me and respectful of what I know about my diabetes. He’s the first one to say, ‘You know more about your condition than I do.’ And that’s true, of course … there’s no substitute for living with it.”

Growing Up Mary The Saturday Evening Post

Turnbladh recently winterized his art compound to boost its attraction as a cozy place to spend an autumn or winter afternoon. He describes Door County as a doers’ destination where guests “can experience art, not just buy it.” The peninsula’s evolution from a warm-weather getaway to a year-round playground is gaining momentum. Rather than hunkering down and waiting for the thaw, residents such as Turnbladh are creating new reasons to beckon guests north to “explore the Door,” as their slogan invites. Roughly two-thirds of the region’s tourists still visit between early May and late October, but the shoulder seasons of winter and spring are becoming increasingly popular.

When temperatures dip, visitors to Door County, Wisconsin, enjoy an after-dark candlelight ski trek.

“You don’t go through Door County,” explains a local merchant, “you go to Door County.” A look at the Wisconsin map underscores his point. The 70-mile Door County Peninsula juts north until it runs out of land and disappears in the swirling water where Green Bay meets Lake Michigan. Early French explorers were so intimidated by the choppy passage between the peninsula’s tip and nearby Washington Island that they called it Port des Morts, or Door to Death. Later, settlers wisely dropped the “death” but held onto the Door.

A ferry service now links Door County with Washington Island, giving visitors one more option to consider when deciding where to go and what to see. The choices and the crowds diminish after the middle of October when fall foliage fades, traffic thins, and some venues close for the season. Getting a table at Al Johnson’s popular Swedish restaurant becomes easier, and the waitresses have time to explain why the goats are on the restaurant’s sod roof (to trim the grass, of course) and what’s so special about Swedish pancakes (they’re square and sprinkled with lingonberries).

Of the county’s 100 art galleries and museums, enough are open to prompt tourists to wander the string of villages, talk to the locals, and hear the quirky stories behind the towns’ names. There’s Carlsville, once spelled “Karlsville” and named for the large number of male residents (six!) with the first name of Karl. Then there’s Egg Harbor, whose name dates back to 1825 when a trade flotilla put down anchor and a food fight broke out among the landing party. This resulted in eggshells covering the pristine beach. The town of Ephraim—a biblical word meaning “fruitful,” appropriate since tart cherries grow by the bushels—was settled by Norwegian Moravians and still follows Moravian law that insists all buildings be painted white.

For a nominal fee, guests can dabble in paint, fuse glass, mold pots, and build metal sculptures at Cy Turnbladh’s Hands On Art Studio in scenic Door County.

During “high season,” at least 10 restaurants in the various villages host outdoor fish boils. By November that number shrinks, but the tradition continues on Friday nights at the century-old White Gull Inn. The cooler weather and early sunset (around 4 p.m. in December) add to the fun because dinner guests huddle outside to form a ring around a huge steaming cauldron. The pot, filled with chunks of fresh whitefish and small red potatoes, is brought to a boil over an open fire. When the fish oils rise to the surface, the Master Boiler tosses a small amount of kerosene under the pot. The burst of flames causes the oils to spill over the sides and leaves the fish perfectly cooked and ready to serve.

Reservations for the fish boil are required in the summer months but off-season guests are likely to claim a spot around the cauldron without advance notice. The same holds true for securing rooms at one of the dozens of inns that stay open after October. Some accommodations are especially welcoming during the six-month stretch that innkeepers call “the quiet season.” At the Blacksmith Inn on the Shore, each room has a postcard view of Lake Michigan, a fireplace, and is furnished with authentic antiques. “My wife scoured the country for the furniture,” says innkeeper Bryan Nelson, who bought the house and its next-door smithy 13 years ago as “a work in progress.”

At least half of the guests at the Blacksmith Inn are repeat visitors who often request their favorite rooms year after year. For newcomers who ask for suggestions on how best to spend their limited time, Bryan has a ready list of activities based on the season. He recommends that warm weather visitors consider a bike ride to the Cana Island lighthouse, a two-hour sail on the schooner Friendly, or an outdoor jazz concert. When the temperatures dip, there are candlelight ski treks, sleigh rides through the woods, and cooking classes at The Savory Spoon. However they customize their itineraries, guests usually voice the same complaint when they leave, according to Bryan. “I often hear people say, ‘We simply ran out of time.’ ”

More than a warm-weather destination, winter visitors enjoy open-sleigh rides in Door County.

Get in line

Door County is football country, and the Green Bay Packers have been the “home team” for 90 years. The Packers open their season on September 13, but if you’re thinking about adding football to your vacation itinerary, get in line. Historic Lambeau Field, home of the Packers, has been sold out since 1960 and has 57,000 names on its ticket waiting list. The team is owned by fans who turn out in record numbers to cheer their 12-time national champions. Average wait for season tickets: 30 years.

Take a number

Did you know that Door County has:

• 300 miles of shoreline
• 10 historic lighthouses
• 42 outlying islands
• 5 state parks
• 2,000 acres of cherry orchards

Cherries for all seasons

Door County orchards typically produce 13 million pounds of tart cherries a year, which means visitors can stock up on cherry wine, salsa, BBQ sauce, jams, butter, juice … and the list goes on and on. Most restaurants and inns keep a ready supply of dried cherries on hand so they can offer their “specialties of the house” year-round.

The recipes for Cherry Almond Scones and Cherry Oatmeal Cookies are from the Blacksmith Inn on the Shore.

All images courtesy of Door County Visitor Bureau, doorcounty.com

Door County, Wisconsin: The Evolving Door The Saturday Evening Post

A phone interview led to an invitation to travel west for the ultimate test-to create a four-course meal for the innkeepers, using whatever he found in the kitchen’s lander. Not only did he pass the test, he the also caught the vision. “We want to take the inn to the next level, and one way to do that is by offering a heart-healthy menu,” explains Ellen Grinsfelder, who operates the facility with her husband. Two years later, Chef Anthony, now a confirmed Buckeye, oversees the kitchen staff, teaches occasional cooking classes, and scours the local markets for the freshest produce to serve guests who come from as far away as Chicago and Detroit.

Grinsfelder’s plan is to preserve the delicate balance between the inn’s rustic setting and its first-clas service. The dining room is housed in an 1840s log cabin, but the art on the walls is original, the food on the tables is elegant, and the wines on the list are diverse. Guests can watch Chef Anthony prepare their North Atlantic flounder stuffed with ricotta and sweet basil knowing that the basil came from the herb garden located atop the inn’s roof, safely out of reach of the deer that wander the grounds.

Hocking Hills—all 11,000 square acres of it—is a sprawling community of cottage industries in the truest sense of the term. Some 200 innkeepers offer cottages, cabins, and rooms to the thousands of tourists who visit each year. Although summer and fall are considered high season for guests, “winter and early spring are my favorite times,” says Grinsfelder, whose mother opened the inn in 1987 to provide a place where city dwellers could retreat to a natural setting. Less than an hour’s drive southeast of Columbus, the region is a doable destination for urbanites in need of rejuvenation.

“Baby boomers are our largest single group of visitors,” says Karen Raymore, a recent transplant from northern Wisconsin and now the executive director of the local tourism association. “People that age—and I’m one of them—like to prove that they can still hike, climb, and zipline.”

Zipline? The latest craze to hit the area has adventure-seekers locked in harnesses and zipping along a network of cables at speeds up to 50 mph. The thrill begins with a 1.5-mile drive via golf cart through the woods to where a giant oak awaits. Guests climb up to a launch pad and for the next two and a half hours are airborne as they soar from one platform to another, some located as high as 70 feet above ground. The views are incredible (if you dare look down) and include the Hocking River, a waterfall, and dramatic rock and cliff formations.

The same rough terrain that draws zipliners also lures hikers who prefer to enjoy the scenery with their boots planted firmly on the ground. Nearby Hocking Hills State Park is massive, as is the state forest that surrounds it. A series of caves is easily accessible through trails and bridges that were built as public works projects during the Great Depression. The steps are still sturdy and the passages from cave to cave are large and airy, causing one claustrophobic hiker to remark with relief, “It’s not like slipping through a birth canal.”

To generate tourism after the spectacular fall foliage season, park officials schedule events that help fill the inns and cabins during the slow months. A six-mile winter trek draws 3,000 and has been a January tradition since 1965; a “sweethearts hike” commemorates Valentine’s Day; and March guests learn the process of turning maple sap into syrup before sitting down for a hardy pancake breakfast. Innkeepers collaborate with local venues to put together “packages” that offer a variety of places to stay, things to do, and restaurants to sample.

Working independently, the scores of inns carve out niches that set each one apart from its competition. For example, the Bear’s Den Cottages is a “nature and wellness retreat” that focuses on fitness and health. The Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls has a full-service spa that offers mother-daughter getaways and a “desperate housewives package.” The Hocking Hills Resort enjoys a reputation as a one-stop wedding destination with an outdoor chapel and an in-house minister.

“We’re not on Main Street, so we knew we had to be versatile,” explains innkeeper Melody Strickland, whose husband, Randy, is certified to officiate at wedding services. Working together, the Stricklands host about 100 weddings each year. Among the most memorable was the formal event they arranged for a New York City couple who were so precise in their plans that they sent recipes for the foods they wanted served at the reception. The pressure was on, but the inn passed the test, recalls Melody. “If we can do that, we can do anything.”

Read more about “stops along the way” by clicking here.

Hocking Hills: A Cottage Industry The Saturday Evening Post

From her workshop located high on a hill between Logan and Lancaster, Ohio, Leota Hutchison creates 500 hand-woven baskets a year. She teaches classes in her eclectic studio where one-of-a-kind baskets are heaped on tables and scores of teakettles hang from the rafters. She collected the kettles to use as pots for her dried flower arrangements, another craft that she mastered and turned into a cottage industry several years ago. Her productivity is legendary, especially since friends estimate her age to be somewhere between 80 and 90. (But don’t ask, because she won’t tell.)

Although Leota doesn’t advertise and has no Web site, her basket-weaving workshops draw a steady enrollment. Students sit on plank benches and, under the watchful eyes of their tough taskmaster, lace strips of pliable wood into small take-home treasures. Visitors who can’t spare the required two or three hours of instruction can rummage through the sizeable inventory and buy a Leota Original for a fraction of its worth.
Six miles south of Hutchison’s hilltop compound is the Columbus Washboard Company, another favorite stopover for visitors who want to sample the local culture. Once the producer of 1.3 million washboards annually, America’s lone washboard company now turns out about 20,000 a year. Some are used as musical instruments, others for decorations, and the bulk for scrubbing clothes the old-fashioned way.

Among the company’s most grateful customers are U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. “We came up with a kit for soldiers,” explains Jacqui Barnett, one of several friends who bought the Columbus-based company in 1999 and moved it to an old shoe factory in Logan. “We send washboards, clothespins, clotheslines, small tubs, and soap.”

Evidence of the military’s gratitude is displayed on a table at the center of the factory’s floor. Soldiers send photos and notes attesting to the kits’ usefulness. “The washboards and tubs arrived at a very opportune time,” wrote one officer. “Our sniper section was sent to a city occupied by Iraqi commandos. We lived on a rooftop when we weren’t out on mission. I will always have vivid memories of doing my laundry on my stomach using those boards and tubs while we stayed low to avoid direct fire.”

Iraq-bound boards are decorated with flag decals and a message that is appropriate for the producers and recipients of the kits: “Proud to be American.”

For information about Hocking Hills, Ohio, visit 1800hocking.com or call 1-800-hocking.

Baskets & Washboards The Saturday Evening Post

In her book, Angel on my Shoulder, Natalie Cole tells the story of her parents’ move to a posh, all-white suburb of Los Angeles in 1947. Residents promptly informed Nat King Cole that home ownership was restricted to whites who celebrated Christmas. People of color or diverse faiths weren’t welcome because neighbors “didn’t want any undesirables moving in.” Cole nodded. “Neither do I,” he assured them, “and if I see any, I’ll be sure to let you know.

The Coles stayed put, fending off lawsuits and enduring cruel signs posted on their lawn. “My parents were very strong people,” says Natalie. “My dad wasn’t about to let anyone tell him where he could sing, where he could eat, or where he could live.”

Natalie was only 15 when her father died of lung cancer at age 45—he was a three-pack-a-day smoker—but she shares many of his traits. A gifted singer, she has 21 albums and eight Grammy awards to her credit; she’s a devoted Christian who admits that when she looks back on her life, “I see the many times I’ve been saved from bad situations.” And, like her dad, she refuses to back down, regardless of the challenge. Diagnosed with hepatitis C last year, she underwent painful treatment for the virus and emerged virus-free but with damaged kidneys. Her jam-packed performance schedule to promote her new CD was scrapped in favor of a new schedule. She is now on dialysis three days per week for three hours and 30 minutes per session. This regimen will continue until her kidneys regain their function (a long shot) or she decides to have a transplant. “I’m still thinking about that,” she admits.

Her latest album, Still Unforgettable, has done well in spite of her limited visibility. Now she is stepping up her public appearances, taking care to arrange for dialysis on the road between engagements. The Post caught up with her a few days before she departed for a major concert in Milan, Italy.

First of all, how are you feeling?
My energy is back, and my stamina is great. In many ways the chemotherapy (for hepatitis C) and dialysis (for kidney disease) have saved my life. The treatment schedule is a chore, but once you realize that dialysis is a part of your routine, you just do it. I was able to go back to work a couple of weeks ago, and although I was looking forward to it, I was a little nervous. We did two shows, back to back, with a full orchestra. It was great! The audience was really, really responsive.

The Post interviewed your dad in 1954 when he was preparing to record a children’s album with you and your sister. You were 4 years old, and he was concerned about your habit of yawning whenever you sang. Your new CD has you doing a virtual duet, Walking My Baby Back Home, with Nat King Cole. Yawning isn’t a problem, but how difficult was it to blend two voices, one of which is preserved on a recording that dates back 57 years?

My father had a very special sound, and thank God I inherited some of that. Not everybody can sing with Dad, which is why a lot of people didn’t attempt to record some of his songs until I did the Unforgettable: With Love project in 1991. I had been singing with him since I was a little girl, so I wasn’t intimidated by his voice, although his phrasing made me crazy. That’s when I realized what a great singer he was. As for the technical part, our engineer, Al Schmitt, was amazed at how well our voices blended. Al would look at the graph on the mixing board and the lights were exactly at the same level. He had never seen anything like it. I guess that’s part of my heritage, and it’s not something that I had to work at too hard. Singing with my dad is fun…a labor of love.

How did working on the new album help you emotionally deal with what was going on outside the studio—the hepatitis C diagnosis?

Music has always been a healing balm for me. It’s the one thing that really makes me very happy. I was grateful when we were working on the album that my voice wasn’t affected by my diagnosis or by my illness. The hepatitis didn’t get severe until I was finished in the studio, so I was able to work steady, work well, and keep my focus. Of course I didn’t have much of a choice since I was the producer of this project; I needed to be in charge. But for all of us in the business, music is what can get us out of any kind of funk that we’re in. It takes over, and that’s a beautiful thing.

You’ve been very candid about tracing your hepatitis C to the heroin addiction that you overcame more than 25 years ago. How have you made peace with your past?

I think it started with learning to be honest with myself. I had the privilege of spending six months in rehab, and it changed my life. One of the things that the twelve-step program teaches us is to be brutally honest. When you’ve been into drugs and you’ve almost lost your life and almost ruined other people’s lives, you have to take responsibility for it. A lot of people aren’t able to do that, especially in show business where there’s a compulsion to cover up everything and try to come off as if you are perfect. But people like you better when they find out that they can trust you. Now I can look at myself in the mirror and know that I’ve done the best that I can, and I don’t have to cover up anything. I think that’s why people respond not just to my music but to me as a person. They feel there’s something behind the song; they understand that I’m not faking anything.

How has your illness affected you aside from the predictable physical changes—the fatigue and weight loss?

I’ve become more of a day-to-day person. With a disease like this, you don’t take life for granted; your mortality becomes very much a part of who you are. I didn’t realize how close I had come to dying when I had the episode with my kidneys failing. Now I’m not in a panic to get things done. I have more clarity. My attitude has changed; I’ve got a little more patience and a lot more compassion for others. God has been really good to me. I’ve had a great life, and for the most part, I’ve been a healthy person. In two years I’ll be 60, and I look at my mom—she’s 87—and I think, “I hope I have some of her genes!”

Speaking of genes, some people say that as we get older we become more and more like our parents. Can you relate to that?

Hmmm…I think I’m a people person like my dad. He was very warm with people, and in return, people gravitated toward him. Also, my dad’s faith was important to him. His father was a Baptist minister, and his whole family was very active in the church. There was a time in my life, back when I was in my 20s, that I was on probation (for drug use). I could have gone to prison, but God looked out for me. Instead, I ended up staying with my aunt in Chicago for several months. She was such an important influence on me. Being with her put me in a spiritual environment at a very critical time in my life. Since then, even though I’ve continued to go through a lot of issues, I’ve known that God has his hand on me. There have been so many times that I’ve felt covered by God.

Last year had its highs and lows for you. As you look ahead, what is your hope for 2009?

Good health is always my first hope. After that, I would love to see our country become more spiritually minded. We need to lose our materialistic ways and reach out and help other people. As Americans, we need to see more of the world and understand how the world sees us. Sometimes we get confused. …We think we’re here to make ourselves happy, but that’s not it at all. We’re here to be of service to others, and that ends up making us happier than we could ever imagine.

What is Hepatitis C?

Deaths due to the hepatitis C virus (HCV) are likely to double or triple in the next 15 to 20 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reason? Most HCV sufferers—an estimated 150 million worldwide, 4 million in the United States—aren’t aware that they have it; therefore, they don’t seek treatment until it’s too late. Here’s what doctors know about the elusive virus:

• A blood-borne disease, HCV often goes unnoticed because victims experience no symptoms for many years.
• Needle sharing among drug users is a common mode of transmission.
• Left untreated, HCV can damage the liver and is the leading cause of liver transplants.
• Successful drug therapy is available, although the FDA-approved antiviral medicine can cause side effects.

The Unforgettable Natalie Cole The Saturday Evening Post

The American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, www.goredforwomen.org, is sponsoring National Wear Red Day on February 6. Millions of women participate to show their support in wiping out heart disease and stroke.

Who will you be wearing red for?

Ladies in Red The Saturday Evening Post

Singer-songwriter Paul Anka remembers the first check he received after his recording of “Diana” soared to the top of the pop charts. The amount was $300, modest even by 1957 standards, but “it seemed like a lot of money to a kid coming off a paper route in Canada,” says Anka, who was 16 at the time. Unlike many one-hit wonders whose success was short-lived in the early days of rock and roll, Anka had the savvy and talent to stay ahead of the trends. The music he wrote soon evolved from sock-hop ballads like “Puppy Love” to big-band standards like “My Way,” created for his mentor and close pal Frank Sinatra.

“Frank and Sammy [Davis, Jr.] looked after me, watched over me, and allowed me into their circle,” he says of the legendary entertainers. The “circle” was Sinatra’s famed Rat Pack, and members included Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. Sinatra gave them all nicknames, which were embroidered on the robes they wore when they lounged around the saunas and pools at the Las Vegas hotels where they performed. Anka, decades younger than the rest of the Pack, emerged as The Kid. The name stuck, although “as I got older and after I wrote ‘My Way,’ the mentoring thing became more of a friendship,” he says.

With an active concert schedule and a new CD in the works, Anka doesn’t dwell on nostalgia, although a couple of current projects have him rummaging through his files and pulling out photos, clippings, and programs from the past. If everything goes according to plan, 2009 is going to be a big year. His autobiography, still untitled, is scheduled for an autumn release, and he’s in preliminary talks about a Broadway show based on his 50-year career.

At age 67, The Kid is on a sentimental journey, recalling the times he traveled with Elvis, hung out with Buddy Holly, popped up on American Bandstand, and wrote a theme song for Johnny Carson. And then there was Ole Blue Eyes….

We’ll begin there.

The Post has uncovered an interesting photo of you, Frank Sinatra, and a monkey. Is there a story behind the picture?

Actually, it was an orangutan. We were in Vegas, and Frank’s friends were throwing a birthday party for him. I remember thinking, What do you give to a guy who has everything? So I went to the circus that was playing at a nearby hotel, and I said, ‘Let me borrow the orangutan.’ It was fitting because back then the atmosphere in Las Vegas was all about the prank. I marched into the party with the orangutan and gave it to Frank. Little did I know that in those days he was wearing a very bad toupee, and [in photos taken that night] the monkey’s hair looks better than Frank’s.

Of the more than 900 songs that you’ve created, “My Way” may be most memorable. What motivated you to write the words that became Sinatra’s signature signoff?

We were at a dinner in Florida when he announced his plan to retire. The Rat Pack had dissipated and he was tired. He said he would make one more album, and then he wanted out. That moved me to go home, imagine myself in his place, and write what would be the retiring song for someone who was the premier artist of all time. I used to do everything on the typewriter — I could type 60 to 65 words a minute — and so I just rattled away from one a.m. until I finished it around five. The song became a turning point for both of us. I remember I was in New York when he called me from the studio in Los Angeles and played it for me for the first time over the phone.

Let’s talk about the early days, the ’50s and ’60s, when you toured with some of the pioneers of rock and roll. What was it like to travel with these great artists — many of them African-American — at a time when some venues didn’t welcome people of color?

I remember that period in great detail. Coming from Canada, it was very difficult for me to understand segregation. I was close to the Platters, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and the others. Consequently, I was taken aback by it. We were close because of the music, but the situation drew us even closer. I remember refusing to eat at places that wouldn’t serve them. I was part of the team and we were very protective of each other. It was a time of great camaraderie.

How did your parents feel about their son going into show business at such a young age? Did they encourage you?

Things were different than they are now. A lot of parents today are sophisticated and start training their kids at age four or five because with shows like American Idol, they know what’s at the end of the rainbow. They understand the possibilities. But that wasn’t the case for us. Television started at five in the afternoon in Canada, and the programming was limited. People really didn’t have their arms around the music yet. My parents were dealing with the unknown — and a kid who was focused and aggressive about what he wanted. They were very concerned when I borrowed some money and went off to New York. Then I called them and said, “Come on down and sign my contract.” They were dazzled by it … and so was I.

You’re working on your autobiography now, piecing together five decades of history. What’s it like to go back in time and recall all that you’ve seen and done?

It’s been cathartic and sentimental. I’ve kept all my memorabilia…all the letters, articles, itineraries, and pictures. I have 50 years’ worth of material, so it’s really a process of editing out what I feel is not important or what I’m not willing to reveal. The memories come back, maybe not the details, but the meat is there when I look at the pictures and read the letters. I can remember what was going on and the people I was meeting.

And now there’s the possibility of a Broadway show…. Do you have a performer in mind to play Paul Anka as a teenager?

Yeah, I like the young kid who was on American Idol [David Archuleta], but there would have to be someone else. My real dream stroke is Robert Downey, Jr. His energy and capabilities are what I envision. That would be the coup of the century.

The music you’ve created over the decades is so varied that it can’t be tucked into a pigeonhole or given a label. How do you continue to stay up on the trends? When you’re in the car with the radio on, what do you like to listen to?

A lot of everything. There’s so much good stuff out there; my taste is eclectic. I listen to Madonna, Elton John, Yo-Yo Ma, Alicia Keys, Tim McGraw…. I have to be aware of what’s going on. I’m always learning something. I can’t come from a limited point of view of not embracing all music. I think that’s a mistake. Some artists are pretty highfalutin about what they do. That’s not me. I like country music a lot…I love the lyrics; I think country is the purest American music; that and jazz. As a musician I get a little something out of all of them.

Obviously you’re not thinking about retiring. Your last couple of albums did well, and you’re headed into the studio for another. Will it be classic Anka or new material?

I’m coming off of the success of Rock Swings

1920s

69 Photos

1930s

69 Photos

1940s

71 Photos

1950s

43 Photos

1960s

16 Photos

J.C. Leyendecker

136 Photos

John Falter

125 Photos

Constantin Alajalov

73 Photos

Thornton Utz

44 Photos

Anton Otto Fishcer

11 Photos

Mead Schaeffer

45 Photos

Stevan Dohanos

118 Photos

Amos Sewell

43 Photos

Richard Sargent

47 Photos

John Clymer

78 Photos

John Atherton

46 Photos

Alan Foster

28 Photos

George Hughes

112 Photos

J.F. Kernan

26 Photos

Ellen Pyle

34 Photos

Albert Staehle

24 Photos

John Newton Howitt

11 Photos

Mad Men Ads

84 Photos

Mad Men Test

6 Photos

Gatsby Girls

26 Photos

gats

Buick 100 year Car Ads

18 Photos

w

buick 100 years

peter helck

3 Photos

Paul Anka: Doing It His Way The Saturday Evening Post

We’ve seen her as Mary Poppins, descending from the heavens, feet pointed out, with one hand gripping a serviceable black umbrella. We’ve watched her as Maria, arms outstretched, filling the hills with the sound of music. More recently, we’ve heard her as Queen Lillian, mother-in-law to Shrek; and we’ve loved her as Queen Clarisse Renaldi, veddy refined grandmother to actress Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries films. But these days Julie Andrews is spending more time creating characters than portraying them.

Collaborating with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, she has some fifteen picture books, novels, and Early Readers to her credit. Her memoir, Home, is her first “adult” effort and earned five-star reviews as it leapfrogged to the top of the bestseller list this summer.

“Writing has taken front and center,” Andrews says of the two careers that compete for her attention. “I write in the morning, certainly four hours a day, if not more. When I get toward the middle of a book, the story begins to assume its own momentum. At that point I write by day and edit by night. As an author you never let go of a story; it’s always in your head.”

At age seventy-three, she exudes enthusiasm as she talks about her passion for books and her belief that children should read more of them. She and Emma oversee The Julie Andrews Collection, a publishing program that includes high-quality works by established and emerging authors as well as “out-of-print gems worthy of resurrection.” She admits that the books featured in the collection might be a tad old-fashioned, but they emphasize virtues—integrity and creativity among them—that never go out of date.

“We’re not as edgy as some authors,” she admits, “but we believe in all the decent things that we hope will help children find their place in this world.”

Andrews recently took a break from her writing regimen to talk with the Post about Home, Whangdoodles, and a new fairy princess who is still in incubation.

Although you’ve been writing books since 1971, most people think of you primarily as a performer. Do you find that it’s harder to interpret someone else’s words as an actress or to create your own words as a writer?

Hmmmm, good question. This may sound odd, but I think it’s more difficult to create words as a writer because there’s always that feeling of insecurity. It’s true that I’ve been writing for more than thirty-five years, but those are my children’s books. Home is my first adult attempt, and I feel like I’m still learning. For me, writing is a joy, but it’s also hard work. There are days when I get horribly stuck. I’ve heard people say that writing is a lonely profession, but I never feel lonely when I’m working on my children’s books. I have companions the whole way because I’m creating things that I love, like the Whangdoodles. [Explanation: A whangdoodle is “a fanciful creature of undefined nature” and the subject of Andrews’ classic The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.]

In your memoir, Home, you manage to recall your early years very vividly. Did you keep a journal when you were growing up?

Yes, but somewhere along the line the very early diaries went missing. As Eliza Doolittle says, “Somebody pinched them!” So, I wrote Home in fits and starts—writing passages as the memories came back to me, then putting them all together later. I remember thinking that I wanted to write about the sights, sounds, and smells…the things that make a book seem very real. Of course, there is such a variety of smells in England, from the terrible railway trains to the beautiful spring lilacs.

How difficult was it to relive the past and confront some events that might have been painful? Did you learn anything about yourself that you hadn’t realized before?

It was an interesting experience and, yes, there were moments when it was painful. But much of what I write about happened fifty years ago, so I’ve had time to put it into perspective and then put it to bed. A lot of it was surprising to me…things that I discovered as I wrote. For example, I had always thought that I had a very happy childhood. I was an optimistic girl, and I had a lot of nice things happen to me. It wasn’t until I started writing that I said to Emma, “Gosh, this seems awfully depressing!” I had forgotten how dark it was at times.

Did you fear a negative response from fans who might prefer to believe you had a fairy-tale existence? Did you wonder how they might react to learning about your mother’s alcoholism and the fact that your biological father was someone other than the dad you adored?

The people who mattered were my family, and since I had never mentioned some things to my brothers and sisters, I first cleared the book with them. After all these years, we are brothers and sisters, whether I’m a half sister or a whole sister. The truth is, I cannot be absolutely certain that what I wrote is the truth. I only wrote what was handed down to me. I can’t prove it without taking DNA tests or whatever. So, the family and I talked about it, and in some ways that brought us even closer together because we realized that it doesn’t really matter…our bonds are so strong.

Since Home only takes us through 1962, can we assume a second book is in the works?

I don’t know if I could do it. The sad truth is that so many people I wrote about are no longer with us. They’ve passed away, so I felt I could write honestly but truthfully and not hurt anybody. We’ll see….

Your daughter, Emma, helped with Home and has been your collaborator on many of your children’s books. How did the partnership start?

My publisher asked if I had any book ideas for very small children. At the time Emma had a young son, so I said, “Emma, if you went to the library to find a book for Sam, what would you choose?” She said, “No contest, Mom! It would be about trucks.” She told me that the only truck books that she found were the very practical variety rather than the whimsical or family-oriented kind. “Well, shall we have a crack at trying to write one?” I asked her. That led to our first series about Dumpy the Dump Truck.

Every team has to have a leader. Who’s the boss, you or Emma?

[laughs] We’re both fairly bossy people, and so at first we wondered if we would be compatible. We discovered, to our delight, that we have an absolutely wonderful time. We laugh a lot, and when we talk, we even finish each other’s sentences. Still, we’re very different. I think she’s a better writer than I am; she’s very structured, whereas I’m given to flights of fantasy. We defer to each other when one of us feels passionately about an issue.

In spite of your busy performing career, you obviously instilled in Emma a true love for books. What advice would you offer parents who want their children to grow up with an appreciation of literature?

Reading to children, even before they’re verbal, is so important. Sit a child on your lap, hug her close, and read. Take a picture book or a magazine and trace the words with your fingers. Talk about what you see; discover together the wonders that are under our noses every day.

What new wonders are you working on now? What should we be looking for in the future?

We’re doing an anthology of some unusual poems, songs, and lullabies that I love. It’s been a joy to pull it together. Right now Emma is typing madly to meet our first deadline. We’ve also been asked if we could do something in the princess genre for young children. We came up with the title The Very Fairy Princess about a girl who is convinced that she’s a princess and that she can do anything. Everyone around her says, “No! You can’t be!” She proves that she just might be a princess if she looks at things in a certain way. We hope it will evolve into a series.

Do you anticipate your two careers intersecting at some point in the future?

It’s happening already. A number of our books are packaged with CDs containing songs, and now a couple of the stories—Simeon’s Gift and The Great American Mousical—are being adapted for family theater. When I began writing, I wanted to combine all the lovely things I used to treasure as a child…the written word, the spoken word, and fine quality artwork. I think to some degree, we’ve succeeded.

At Home with Julie Andrews The Saturday Evening Post

Two characteristics set radio talk show host Diane Rehm apart from her on-air colleagues. First, there’s her voice. Diagnosed a decade ago with an incurable disorder called spasmodic dysphonia, she has a distinct delivery that varies in strength depending on how recently she has endured the painful but necessary injections to her vocal chords. Second, there’s her determination to remain neutral on hot-button topics. Sure, she feels passionately about most issues, but “I don’t want to become the person who tells listeners what to think,” she insists. “That’s been my charge right from the start.”

In her case, “the start” came 35 years ago when she volunteered to help plan programs and book guests for The Home Show, aired daily from a small public radio station in suburban Washington, D.C. Her first Monday on the job proved life-changing. The show’s host called in sick, and a desperate station manager recruited Diane to conduct a live interview with a spokeswoman from the Dairy Council about the wonders of milk and cheese. It was a long 90 minutes.

Things have improved. Today, The Diane Rehm Show boasts a national audience of almost two million listeners and attracts guests who include U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, Nobel Prize winners, best-selling authors, and A-list movie stars. What hasn’t changed is Rehm’s love for her job and her wonder at having landed it. Without benefit of a college degree or formal broadcast training, she has emerged as an award-winning journalist whom The National Journal describes as “the class act of the talk radio world.”

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of The Diane Rehm Show, this veteran interviewer agreed to a Post interview. No topic was off-limits—except milk and cheese.

You grew up in an Arab-American home where a young girl’s opinions weren’t exactly solicited. How did you evolve into a strong communicator who could hold her own with everyone from Newt Gingrich to Hillary Clinton?

As a child, I lived in two separate worlds. I had one foot in the Arab world, where my parents spoke to me in Arabic, and I responded in English, and my opinions were not asked for. The other foot was in school, where my teachers thought I was bright and encouraged me to perform in plays and to read, sing, and recite on stage. I’ve never been bashful. Because there were so many unanswered questions in our home, I was that much more curious about what was happening in the world. If you read my first book [Finding My Voice], you know I was married once before [to an Arab-American]. I realized after my mother and father died that I was not going to get all my questions answered from within the confines of the Arab community. I had to break free, and breaking free allowed me to voice my questions publicly with everybody around me.

And then your future husband, John Rehm, came into your life….

[laughs] And then John Rehm came into my life. He was—and is—the smartest person I’ve ever known. I could ask him about art; I could ask him about music; I could ask him about this political question or that environmental issue. He knew the world because he had had this wonderful education, and he was happy to educate me. I still can say, “Sweetheart, I don’t understand this. Could you explain it to me?” He always begins with a very simple explanation.

At the outset of your radio career you planned the shows, booked the guests, and wrote the scripts. Even now, with the help of five producers, the burden is on you to keep current on everything from sports to politics. How do you do it?

You’re right—I did it all in those first couple of years, and it was a killer job. Now I read everything the producers give me. I listen to two hours of [NPR’s] Morning Edition as I’m getting ready for work. I come to the office and have The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post to skim through. When I get home at 6 o’clock, I turn on the first half hour of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer; at 6:30, I switch to ABC and watch Charlie Gibson; at 7, I turn to NBC and Brian Williams; and at 7:30, I’m back for the last half hour with Jim Lehrer. So there’s a lot of material coming into my head constantly.

Sounds like information overload. What do you read for fun?

My reading habits at home, before I go to sleep at night or on a Sunday afternoon, are pure fiction! I love to get away from the world of reality.

Since your radio program invites listeners to call in or send emails, you have your hand on the pulse of America. What discussions draw the most response—the lightweight stuff or the heavy topics?

Oh, my gosh, it’s everything. We’re told that there are about 300 callers trying to get through at any one time. We only have six lines. During this morning’s second hour alone, we got about 450 emails! It’s constant.

Share some of your interview secrets. Do you have a few stock questions that you use if an on-air conversation starts to lag?

Sure. I like to ask a lot of “how” and “why” questions. If I don’t understand something, I honestly say, “I don’t get it.” I think people appreciate that because if I don’t get it, there are probably an awful lot of other listeners out there who don’t get it, either.

What’s your strategy when guests ramble or rely on stock talking points? How do you jerk them back?

In a case like that, I find myself interrupting to a certain degree, or I’ll take a breath to indicate to the person across the table that I want to get a word in. Sometimes I’ll use my hand to gesture that the person has to stop talking. People who watch the show in the studio tell me I look like an orchestra conductor because I’m waving my hands all over the place. I think I get the message through. That’s one reason I hate doing interviews on the telephone. I want to look at their eyes. I want to see what they’re doing with their hands. I remember one guest who kept making his point by banging on the table! I had to give him the sign that he couldn’t do that.

Have you ever felt intimidated by a guest?

I don’t know if “intimidated” is the right word, but it felt overwhelming to interview a sitting president in the Oval Office. That, for me, was huge. Here he comes [President Clinton], charging through the cabinet doors, and his nose is running and his eyes are watering, and he’s saying, “God, my allergies are killing me!” It’s scary stuff to sit there in the Oval Office—a gorgeous place, by the way—and hope you won’t come across as stupid. This is, after all, the leader of the free world.

What about guests who agree to be interviewed but give you all sorts of ground rules. They want to talk about this, but they won’t talk about that….

The only persons who got away with that were Sandra Day O’Connor, who said she wouldn’t talk about the 2000 election, and Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense. The day before our interview, McNamara called at 5:30 in the afternoon after almost everybody had left the office. He said, “I’m not going to take calls from listeners.” I said, “We have to take calls from listeners.” He said, “Well, then, I won’t come on.” I told him I’d call him back, and I went upstairs and talked to my boss. We decided to go through with the interview, but when McNamara came in the next morning and the microphones were on, my very first question was: “Mr. McNamara, you refuse to take questions from our listeners. Why is that?” It put him on the spot, but it was the question to ask.

In 1998, your career almost ended because of a mysterious speech problem that continues to affect your voice. You took a leave of absence until you were diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia. How have your listeners responded?

They’ve been wonderful. One of the first things I did after I came back to the show was to invite all my doctors into the studio for an on-air discussion about spasmodic dysphonia. They talked about what it is, what treatments I would be getting—I have injections about every four months—and how there is no cure. Ever since then, people have been genuinely kind and sympathetic.

As you approach the 30-year anniversary of the The Diane Rehm Show, give us your assessment of talk radio’s evolution. Is it moving in the right direction?

If you go back to the late ’20s and early ’30s, you had a number of demagogues on the radio who told listeners what the facts were…according to them. That’s what I hear some [talk show hosts] doing today. They’re trying to divide the world into liberals and conservatives. What a shame! We’re all Americans, we all have our share of problems, but we all want this country to be successful. How do you create a successful country when you’re knocking down half the electorate? It just doesn’t work.

Diane Rehm: Voice of Experience The Saturday Evening Post

Whereas Finding My Voice is a typical—although insightful—autobiography, Toward Commitment is as much about marriage in general as it is about the Rehms’ 50-year union. John Rehm, a retired attorney, shares equal billing and is as eloquent as his wife. The book is formatted as essays followed by dialogues, with each author weighing in on more than 20 issues that spouses face. Never preaching, they talk about everything from money to religion and from to anger to making love. Again, honesty prevails. In the chapter called “The Third Person,” each partner admits to experiencing an attraction to someone outside their marriage. “I think at one point we were both serious about going our separate ways,” writes Diane.

Fortunately, they didn’t. Unfortunately they never discussed the hurt that the outside relationships caused them. Only when they collaborated on Toward Commitment did they air their feelings and put them to rest. “Now that you and I are in a good place,” writes John. “it isn’t that painful to look back.”

To nudge readers to take a look at their own marriages, the Rehms include several questions that spouses might ask each other. They conclude: “If this book succeeds in provoking individuals to think harder and more seriously about the committed relationship, both its benefits and its drawbacks, it will have been worthwhile.”

Portrait of a Marriage The Saturday Evening Post