WASHINGTON — Tom Brokaw opened Sunday's somber edition of "Meet the Press" by invoking a large wooden sign Tim Russert displayed in his office.
"It's going to be our mantra for this morning," Brokaw said. "It says, 'Thou shall not whine.' And if I can add, I think, anything to that, 'Thou shall not weep or cry this morning.' This is a celebration, a time to remember."
But that edict proved hard to observe as Russert's colleagues eulogized him on the NBC political talk show he moderated for nearly 17 years until his unexpected death from a heart attack Friday.
The program opened silently, with the camera focused on the darkened set and the moderator's empty chair. Brokaw and a gathering of Russert's friends sat in a semicircle in front of the stage, reminiscing about the man and his passion for political discourse.
"I can certainly comply with one-half of your request: I won't whine," columnist Mike Barnicle told Brokaw, grabbing the anchor's arm, his voice thick with emotion. "But I can't commit at this end of this program to not crying. . . . We will all continue, but it will never, ever be the same."
Throughout the weekend, Russert's shaken colleagues wrestled with the death of the prominent political analyst in a remarkably public forum that spotlighted their bewilderment and pain.
For three straight days, NBC News devoted its resources to memorializing him on the air. Within hours after Russert's collapse at the network's Washington bureau Friday afternoon, MSNBC turned over its programming to mourning him. Brokaw anchored a one-hour special about him that night on NBC, and the coverage continued on NBC and MSNBC throughout the weekend.
But it wasn't just his own employer that lionized Russert. CNN dedicated all of its Friday-night programming and a good part of Sunday to memorializing him -- a level of coverage more associated with the death of a president than a journalist -- and Fox News Channel reported on his death throughout the weekend.
All the Sunday talk shows included words of condolence to Russert's family: his father, also named Tim but popularly known as "Big Russ," a former sanitation worker in Buffalo, N.Y.; his son, Luke, who recently graduated from Boston College; and his wife, Maureen Orth, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine.
Thousands of viewers wrote spontaneously at the websites of NBC and other networks, expressing their sorrow. Typical was the note posted by an Ohio viewer using the name "Mahr" on the CNN website.
