The Apple and the Tree: Finding Tim Russert's Core

Tim Russert’s death is yet another reminder that good things don’t last forever. Imagine the countless political enthusiasts waiting to hear Russert’s take on the November 2008 election! His untimely death was a jolt, if even for the fact that we had already put Russert’s presence in our future.

And why wouldn’t we? Russert had become as dependable as knowing the television would work with a push of the button… always there on Sunday morning, always prepared, always seeming to be right, and always looking mildly agitated, or maybe over-focused on his goals for that morning. Indeed, getting at the real story had been pushing Tim Russert since he was five or six years old – about 52 to 53 years!

Little Tim Russert sees history on his dad’s back, and that intriguing book cover makes him want more. Mom gives him a final piece of the story's dénouement, but without the build-up and the climax, including all the details pertaining to his father, the plot is just too big to put together…especially for a kindergartener!

And let’s remember, scars open up the imagination. Consider the enthusiasm of a 5 or 6 year old. A plane crash is already larger-than-life, and to think that it involves my “everyday dad”…and he survived the crash?! Wow! Well now... that changes everything!

Who is this person I call Dad, after all? What else is there about Daddy I don’t know? Why did his plane crash? What happened? How did Daddy survive? What or who saved him? What is he hiding? The questions are endless.

And here’s the challenge for all of us. When something traumatic happens to people we know, including ourselves, and we are unable to get the whole story right away, we instinctively make up the particulars we don’t have. We embellish, we theorize, we create the missing details effortlessly. In fact, this is how gossip originates. We don’t have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so we hypothesize the most plausible truth from our particular frame of reference. We’d rather fabricate the details than leave blank spaces unaccounted for.

Thus, to regain control of his imagination, Tim had to get the real story about his dad. In fact, scars and the idea of a plane crash now make Dad so much more interesting.

But then Dad swims away…hoping to leave the details in the past.

As the parachute rigger, Russert’s dad undoubtedly carried considerable guilt with him after the crash, not only because he was a survivor (survivor’s guilt), but also because the rigger, charged with packing, maintaining, and repairing parachutes, has to be focused on survival at all times. Inevitably, even if illogical, the senior Russert would have consciously or unconsciously questioned his personal responsibility with regard to the outcome of each and every soldier involved in the crash. When Big Russ swims away from his son’s questions, he is doing what people do who hold on to painful secrets: They avoid talking about them…similar, in many ways, to guests who appear on Meet the Press.

Many guests on Meet the Press surely want to swim away from their past, but just like Russet’s memory in which his dad finally shares the article describing the crash of a B-24 Liberator, Russert finds article after article, quote after quote, holding each and every Meet the Press guest to a high standard of integrity regarding their views, goals, ideas, and previous actions.

The patience Russert develops as a child in his efforts to obtain information about his dad’s plane crash was evidenced every week on Meet the Press. Russert systematically and strategically threaded together a guest’s purported versus previous point of view, thus delivering to his viewing public not just a news program, but a dynamic and thought-provoking news event.

Yes, Tim Russert, like his father, was completely willing to collect and unload people’s garbage to get his job done. And whereas Russert’s dad ran into the water to avoid revealing his emotions, Russert pushed his Meet the Press guests until feelings came to the surface – as evidenced by participants’ body language, particularly their finger pointing. As one who was seeking to know, Russert never hesitated to display the compost of a guest’s pertinent past, thereby assuring equal airtime for every incongruity.

Tim Russert admired his father, the garbage collector, and in one unexpected way, Russert grew up to be just like him.

Crash "Seen:" Tim Russert's Early Memory

Every summer, our family used to rent a cottage for a week at Wasaga Beach in Ontario, where Dad, a strong man who loved the water, used to let my sisters and me lie on his back while he swam. One morning, when I was five or six, we were on the beach in our bathing suits when I noticed that Dad had several scars on his back. I had probably seen them before, but this was the first time I really noticed them.

When I asked Mom why they were there, she told me that Dad had been injured in a plane crash during the war. So, of course I went over and asked him, “Dad, were you really in a plane crash?’

“Yeah,” he said, but the word was barely out of his mouth before he jumped back in the water. Even at that age, I could see that he was running away – or in this case, actually swimming away – from my questions.

As the years went on, especially on Memorial Day, when we went to the local cemetery to plant little American flags on the graves of war veterans, I sometimes asked him about the war. Although I desperately wanted to know what happened, I was careful not to push too hard. It was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, and I imagined that I might feel the same way if something that terrible happened to me. Every time I asked about the war, he would parcel out another detail or two. One year he said, “Everybody did their job, and I did mine. I was a parachute rigger.” Another time, referring to the crash, he said, “It was a foggy day, really bad weather.”

When I was in high school, the two of us were in the basement one day when Dad walked over to his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a manila folder. He handed me a yellowed clipping for the October 24, 1944, edition of the Southport Weekly, an English newspaper. The headline read US BOMBER CRASHES IN FLAMES AT AINSDALE, and the article described the crash of a B-24 Liberator at an air base in England. I read it quickly and zeroed in on the key lines: “The plane, which had been circling around as though preparatory to landing…somersaulting into a field, immediately bursting into flames. When the place crashed it broke up, and some of the air men were thrown clear.”

Dad, I realized, had been one of them.

Tim Russert’s worldview is…
1. I seek fame.
2. I seek to know. (100%)
3. I seek to teach.
4. I seek to entertain.