Five years ago tomorrow, my pre-bedtime ritual was interrupted. I remember very clearly stopping short in my bedroom, and feeling my heart drop into my stomach.
Peter Jennings was dead.
I realize that to most people, his passing was just another footnote on the celebrity pages.
To me, Peter Jennings was a strong voice that I had listened to and believed for as long as I could remember. He took the reigns at ABC News when I was 6 or 7. He was the only anchor I knew from the time I was old enough to pay attention until I had a baby of my own. That’s a long time.
He wasn’t just a celebrity, or a journalist. To me, a news junkie who thought it was romantic to watch the news with her boyfriend, fiancée and then husband, Peter Jennings was someone I spent time with nearly every day for 20 years.
His voice is part of the soundtrack of the scariest times in my life. The first war (or conflict) I’d ever lived through, September 11 and eventually, his explanation of his lung cancer.
When I listened to his voice crack in that explanation, I saw the first and only sign of weakness I’d ever seen in him. I teared up in the way you do when you find out your uncle has a terminal disease.
It wasn’t long after that that I was standing in my bedroom, calling for my husband to come to the TV.
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