IT WAS ONLY FITTING that Peter Jennings was there to authenticate the most surreal moment of my life. War had suddenly broken out on a glorious autumn day in New York, and I was making my way across the stunned city to man my journalistic battle station.
As I crossed Times Square, it happened. I paused to catch the latest on the jumbo TV screen above ABC's "Good Morning America" studio and gasped at the sight of the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsing, engulfing southern Manhattan -- where my wife and countless friends were -- in a mushroom cloud. Jennings' own ashen on-screen look reinforced the fact that this was really happening; it wasn't some nightmare or a scene out of a schlocky summer blockbuster.
Jennings had seen me through a lot. He became the sole anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" my junior year of high school. I'm not that old, but I feel old when I contemplate how the world has changed since then. Consider that his inaugural broadcast on Sept. 5, 1983, dealt with some of the fallout of the Soviet Union's shooting down of a Korean airliner. Jennings quoted a Soviet spokesman, saying, "Our defense forces fulfilled their duty in defending the security of the motherland."
It was only my third year living in the U.S., and in contrast with the notoriously propagandistic, rambling newscasts back in Mexico, the big three's polished network newscasts were one of the marvels of my new home. ABC News was the gold standard in my book. The urbane and vaguely foreign duo of Jennings in the evening and Ted Koppel late at night signaled to millions of households across this reluctant global superpower that foreign news mattered most. When Tom Brokaw finally overtook Jennings in the ratings during the self-contented peace and prosperity of the Clinton era, it was as if an all-clear signal had been given.
Of course, the all-clear was premature, as evidenced by the ashen-looking Jennings on 9/11. In the intervening years, I had strayed from the habit of broadcast news, but whenever I happened to catch Jennings and his suave "We begin tonight" opening, it always offered the same comforting feeling you get from a favorite old sweater or an album you prized in high school. And Jennings wasn't merely comforting in the days after 9/11, he was a fantastic journalist, a fact obscured by the cult of personality built around the three network anchors.
