Hey, there. I’m a research partner on the Dave Garroway biography project. I’m pleased to begin as a contributor here (my colleague has been killing it since “Garroway at Large” launched), and I hope I can give you some interesting items and stories from my own research into Dave’s life.
I was born three years after Dave took his own life, so I have no living memory of the man. At no point did I switch on the black-and-white Philco in the kitchen to watch J. Fred Muggs drag Jack Lescoulie’s flimsy desk across the newsroom. I grew up with Today in the ’90s. I have memories of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric, and Fred Facey’s authoritative “LIVE from Studio 1A!” voiceover. Like many viewers, I counted on Today to be on television each morning, but I gave nary a thought to what came before.
That changed, dramatically, in January 2002. TV Guide told me Today was turning fifty. Fifty! Impossible! (And Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters were once young and non-ABC anchors?)
I was sufficiently interested that on Monday, January 14, I handed a VHS tape to my grandmother and asked her to record the whole show. I wanted to see what this was all about. When I got home from school, I rewound the tape and started watching.
I was mesmerized. The clocks, maps, teletypes and microphones were a true delight. But I was particularly struck by this monochrome fellow in the bow tie and glasses. He was bookish and erudite, unafraid of polysyllabic words or arcane musings. He seemed to exude class and unflappability.
For whatever reason, this deeply impressed me. I started wearing argyle socks and picking up a few jazz records. There’s no doubt that in Dave Garroway, I saw a kind of masterclass in How to Be Interesting and Cool. I confess; to some degree, I still do.
In the ensuing sixteen years, I learned much more about Dave’s darker sides, his struggles and his untimely end. But instead of pushing me away, the complexity and nuance held my fascination. Here was his reality, beyond the fond, gray-tinted viewer memories.
Now for the last year or so, your main author and I have been trading notes, mulling, speculating, harnessing information and otherwise trying to make sense of Dave’s narrative in a way that can be published and enjoyed. It’s beyond time for the Communicator’s story to be told. I look forward to helping tell it.
