Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090039
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
It was to be the first pair for Williams, who as he tells this story is wearing tassel loafers. ``But I knew that the person to call for guidance was veteran boot-wearer Tom Brokaw. Tom talked me through what to look for in a good starter pair of boots, and told me what to expect to pay.''
But temptation lay ahead. Arriving at Al's Bootery, Williams felt his usual rectitude dissolve at the sight of what, even now, he grows rapturous describing (``a higher-echelon pair with butter-like leather''). At roughly four times the price that Brokaw specified.
``I sent you out for a pickup truck and you came back with a Range Rover,'' Brokaw told him later, feigning disapproval.
Then came the ``Nightly News'' anchor's real zinger: ``That's the kind of thing an heir apparent would wear.''
At least they can laugh about it. But who knows how that ``heir apparent'' stuff got started, or how long it will hang on? Certainly not Williams and Brokaw, whom this loopy scenario casts as NBC News' Boy Wonder and the man whose anchor chair Williams is a shoo-in to inherit.
Let's not bury our lead too deep: Right smack-dab where he is, Brian Williams is a happy man, and then some.
He's happy to be at NBC News, happy to be covering the White House, happy - no, thrilled - to have had the president of the United States surprise him with a cake last May aloft in Air Force One, to celebrate Williams' 36th birthday.
Asked to assess Clinton's rendition of ``Happy Birthday,'' Williams replies, ``I was too stunned to listen. The whole thing'' - and he means not just that return flight from East Lansing, Mich., on the world's most famous airline, but THE WHOLE THING - ``has been a wild ride.''
It was two years ago that the ride set Williams down at NBC News, after stints at stations in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and, most recently, New York's WCBS-TV, where he was - yes - very happy.
To say that NBC News was in dire straits in March 1993 is to hint at the Titanic's doubtful seaworthiness, ``but for me, this Titanic meant opportunity,'' Williams explains.
He would be the last hire by Michael Gartner, who the day Williams arrived resigned in disgrace as president of an organization whose standing had sunk almost as low as its morale.
In the subsequent resurrection of NBC News under Gartner's successor, Andrew Lack, Williams has played a conspicuous role. He not only covers the president, but also anchors the ``Nightly News Saturday Edition,'' and occasionally sits in for Brokaw on the ``Nightly News'' and for Tim Russert moderating ``Meet the Press.''
All pretty good for a guy enrolled a while back at the community college in his hometown of Middletown, N.J., where he was a volunteer fireman and sold hardware at Sears part time. Pretty happily.
Now, years later, Williams reports news coast-to-coast with a smooth, authoritative delivery, and with the straight-arrow good looks of a Secret Service agent, for whom he says he has been mistaken in his current beat:
``I wear an earpiece to listen to Tom from the [White House] lawn. With sunglasses on, I could flank the president and nobody would bat an eyelash.''
Indeed, Williams IS somewhat of a straight arrow. Unlike many of his network news colleagues, he charges nothing for making a speech.
Also unlike many of them, he never comments on the news he reports, just reports it. ``I would sooner cut off a limb than let people know my true feelings about the president I cover,'' he says.
Is Brian Williams a Boy Scout encamped in the Fourth Estate? Maybe. But off the air, he displays an easy, often self-deprecating sense of humor, all too happily making sport of his blue-suit-white-shirt taste in clothes (``maybe someone should pull my wardrobe out of the mid-'60s''), his slightly askew nose (``I broke it during football practice - not even during a GAME!''), his aversion to modern marvels.
``Technologically, I'm a young fogey,'' he confesses. ``I'm a Rambler American rumbling along the information superhighway. My VCR flashes 12 noon, or is it midnight? I don't know. But I can't record anything. My wife and I rent movies. I can hit `play.'
``And I always rewind before returning,'' he adds.
He's that kind of guy.
by CNB