A rich life is so very much about the people met on the path, even if for only a short time. Recently, the elections prompted me to Google the name of a Peace Corps comrade from my stint in 1968-69 in Paraguay, a guy who later went home to Ohio and became Clevelands and Ohios most enduring TV anchorman. On election day, I sent Ted Henry at Channel 5, the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, to tell him how he had come up in a conversation with my Tribune supervisor who was from Cleveland and who remembered Ted, who has been a news fixture there since 1972. I reminded Ted how a decade ago, I called the station while I was serving as vice-chairman of an American Red Cross committee while it was holding its national convention in Cleveland. We had had a brief chat at the time. Years before that, while stopping overnight in Cleveland on a cross-country drive, I stumbled across Ted anchoring an evening newscast. This week, the busy anchor responded with a rich e-mail, telling me how he read my blogs and that he also has a blog, Ted Henrys 5 On Your Side Blog (www.newsnet5.com/tedsblog/index.html). He told me that after 34 years of anchoring the news at 6 and 11 p.m. for the local ABC affiliate, he has begun to pursue stories of my passion, spirituality. For the past two years, he has reported special stories of a spiritual dimension — a story a week during the Friday 6 p.m. news. There have been three documentaries and even a 36-part series on a medical doctor who heals through prayer. Right now, I am interviewing an imam, rabbi, priest and evangelical minister about how you get to heaven, Ted wrote me. Their responses are all reflective and quite interesting.Ted and his wife Jody will leave in three weeks for India, their 10th trip to the subcontinent. We have been attracted to an 80-year-old teacher there in the south desert section of the country who draws tens of thousands of people daily from all parts of the world and from all parts of the intellectual, economic and cultural sectors. Ted said his hobby is to interview and videotape holy people for an hour at a time wherever I find them. There have been lots of saintly people and a few sinners from greater Cleveland to Bangalore to the Kingdom of Bhutan. He said the whole project has evolved mostly into the way I learn at the feet of other wise souls.I couldnt agree more with Ted than when he made this statement: Being a reporter for 40 years has taught me that almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime, will willingly answer almost any question I put to them. Over the years, he said, he has found that there is an enormous mother lode of rich stories to be mined by simply focusing questions on the human and spiritual condition.A recent story was on a movie actor who has glorified violence in all 30 of his martial arts films and believes he is a reincarnated lama, which makes him a god. Ted said what he goes after is never dull. The veteran anchorman, who has won four Emmys and many national and state awards, has traveled the world on special TV assignments, including six trips to Israel, being at the Berlin Wall when it was being torn down in 1989 and in Rome for the papal transition in 2005. He fired back numerous questions for me, mostly about my own more than four decades of journalism and my writing about religion and spirituality for about 16 years. Questions like how did I get into doing news writing in this specialty and how has all of your writings shaped your own still-to-be-written story of personal growth and understanding?I have often told people that across my 60 years, I have worked and served with many, many groups, but nothing compares to my Peace Corps gang as people of remarkable character, folks demonstrating real purpose in life and having drive and focus. They seemed to have a powerful sense of where they were headed. I suspect most of them today are extremely successful and have left their marks on their fields. They used to say, The Peace Corps: The Toughest Job Youll Ever Love. I have stories of many people I once knew who went on to greatness and distinction, and that is always heartening. And Ted Henry is a good example of a Peace Corps alumnus who had so much on the ball serving in Caazapa, Paraguay, that it followed that he would excel on his return to the States. For a seasoned TV newsman seeking something more, its back to India to ply his storytelling skills and change hearts. I owe him a long e-mail to catch up and to rebuild a Peace Corps bond and assure one another that, somehow, that experience so long ago may have fostered something special in each of us, a kind of catalyst to pursue greater things and, as Ted says, go to learn at the feet of wise souls.

Posted in: Uncategorized |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.