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Fotheringham

The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.

The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.

Late in 1962Ñat the time of the Cuban Missile CrisisÑthis scribbler was sitting in the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon, having a drink with a clutch of American correspondents, while watching the flash of gunfire across the river. Three of my mates, as it turned out, later won Pulitzer Prizes for their reportingÑincluding David Halberstam of the New York Times and Malcolm Browne of United Press International. Halberstam, representing the most influential newspaper in the world, so enraged John Kennedy with his Vietnam dispatches that the president sent a message to the NYT that he should be fired or at least transferred. Scotty Reston, the wonderful Times bureau chief in Washington who stood resolutely behind every bright young reporter he had hired, sent a quiet message to the White House: "We were here long before you got here, and we will be here long after you are gone." Which brings up Walter Cronkite. The legendary anchor-man who was voted, in the Gallup Poll year after year, as the "most-trusted American." Cronkite could not understand the divergence between the White House line and the consistent reports from Halberstam and the others Ð how American generals were lying to the U.S. public about how things were going so well in the Vietnam quagmire. He flew to Saigon, checked out all the correspondents, and found out they were the ones telling the truth. He returned home, gave his solid conclusions over several nights on the most-watched nightly news in the most powerful country on earth. Lyndon Johnson, now president after Kennedy's death in Dallas, said, "If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." And he announced he would not run for president again, retired to his Texas ranch and grew his hair long like a hippy. And so, Cronkite also announced a failing last week. He gave up his supreme anchor post 22 years ago at age 65. "The dumbest mistake I've ever made it my life," he confessed. "I need to get up every morning and go to a job. I never thought I would be so healthy this long." See 'A' P.# Con't from P.# Which brings up Larry King, king of the suspenders. He's being celebrating his long celebration of his 70th birthday on his CNN gabfest, featuring such guests this week as the wife of the president, Laura Bush, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brokaw and everybody who is anyone. King has a short attention span in some areasÑhe has been married nine times. But he's a survivor in this terrible trade called journalism/media. Nothing but a newspaper columnist in Miami, he hooked on in 1985 with Ted Turner's improbable news-all-day CNN. He never thought he would last past 43Ñthe age of his father's death of a heart attack. But he's lastedÑa triple-bypass in 1989Ñthrough what he thinks is some 45,000 interviews in his 46 years in the trade. The only one, he regrets, is the Pope. Plus, perhaps that thanks to his latest marriage he has two boys, aged 3 and 4. And will never see them to university. Which brings up Pierre Berton, who is 83, and has published 49 books. And while 83, on a cane, has just this month finished his 50th in his retreat in Kleinburg, an hour north of Toronto. It will be out next year, Prisoners of the NorthÑRobert Service and those guys who came from where Berton was born, the Klondike. And next year, trust me, will come the 51st. The point is that retirement is death. What keeps you alive is curiosityÑas witness Cronkite, King and Berton. As long as the brain is ticking. I know this, from observing over the years all my superiors. (I'm 39.) X x x AND ANOTHER THING Also useful, since the study of the female race is another of my obsessions, is the price tag on the 10 highest-paid university presidents in the Excited States of America. Of the ten, No. 1 is Shirley Ann Jackson of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at $891,400. And No. 3 is Judith Rodin of University of Pennsylvania at $845,474. /Yr. Welcome. X x x QUOTE OF THE MONTH "I don't claim any project management expertise or nuclear expertise"ÑRon Osborne, President and Chief Executive of Ontario Power Generation, paid $850,000 in 2002 plus $100,767 other compensation, with a contract of a year's salary after being fired by Dalton McGuinty's new Liberal government.

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