SUNDAYS just won’t be the same without Tim Russert.
The beloved, blue-collar, 58-year-old host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” who died of a heart attack on the set of the ground-breaking program Friday, left behind a 17-year legacy of tough questions, in-depth analysis and an everyman sensibility.
This morning’s “Meet the Press” will be hosted by Tom Brokaw and feature highlights of Russert’s career. Guests will include James Carville, columnist Mike Barnicle and producer Betsy Fischer, among others.
Russert’s wife, Maureen Orth, and son, Luke, arrived home yesterday from a family vacation in Italy, and funeral arrangements were pending, according to family friends. Tonight in his hometown of Buffalo, a candlelight vigil will be held to honor a favorite son.
Said longtime friend and attorney Robert Barnett yesterday: “If it’s Sunday, it will always be ‘Meet the Press’ with Tim Russert. I am absolutely certain that today he will be moderating in the hereafter with Bobby Kennedy, Pope John Paul, Richard Nixon and FDR as the guests. What a show that will be.”
Barnett and other Russert friends and colleagues remembered the man behind the microphone, sharing personal stories of his life:
Sen. Charles Schumer
Mario Cuomo won the primary for governor in 1982, and it was a big surprise. Tim Russert made that happen. Everyone thought Ed Koch was going to take it. Then Mario came down to Washington to do sort of a victory lap, and Tim Downey and I – both congressmen from New York then – we were kind of scared, because we had both endorsed Koch.
Tim came to us and said he was going to patch things up for us. He said what we’d do is hold a basketball game. It was going to be Downey and Schumer against Russert and Cuomo.
So, in all, we all went to the congressional gym, which we weren’t really supposed to do, but they made an exception for us, and there we were in our stocking feet and our suits, playing Brooklyn-against-South Buffalo basketball.
We played to 35 points, for about an hour, and our clothes were soaking wet when we finished. Tim, even though he was a big guy, was every bit as quick on the basketball court as he was as a reporter and political person.
The one thing Tim said to us at the beginning of the game was, “We’re not going to reveal who won.” And everybody wanted to know – there were reporters waiting outside – but we never told, and that secret will stay between me, Tom and Mario and Tim up in heaven.
NY Post Albany Bureau Chief Fredric U. Dicker
I remember Tim hanging out at Albany nightspots in 1983 and 1984 in Albany, when he was Gov. Cuomo’s communications director . . . regaling the press with his impersonations of his then-newly ex-boss, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Tim enjoyed a drink or two and would then go into his Moynihan impersonation, which was flawless.
We’d demand to know if he ever did it while he worked for Moynihan, perhaps when the senator, who was known to enjoy a drink or two or three himself, might not have been available to constituents.
He’d respond with a hearty laugh, “I’ll never tell!”
NBC correspondent
Gabe Pressman
I remember, many years ago, when he wanted to have a child. We had discussed it, and I knew he was trying.
One day I saw him, and I imagine some time had passed from the last time I saw him, and he gave me that great smile and a big thumbs-up in the air, and I knew that meant [wife] Maureen [Orth] was going to have a baby.
It was kind of sweet. I can see his twinkling eyes and that Irish face right now.
Author, columnist
and Reagan speech writer
Peggy Noonan
It was a few months ago, the day of the New York primary. I was walking into a studio at Rockefeller Center and bumped into Tim. We said hello, and then he took me aside and his eyes were glowing.
He said he’d just been walking along Sixth Avenue and met an immigrant to America who came up to him with great excitement. She said to him, “Hey, you’re the TV man! Listen, I just voted for the first time as an American.”
Tim said he told her congratulations, and then he said: “Here is the great thing. Your vote counts just as much as the president’s. It has as much weight as anyone else’s who’s been here forever.”
His eyes filled with tears as he told me this. He was a real patriot. He really cared about America and its future.
It was one of those weird turns in life that at the moment he was stricken I was at a small makeshift television studio in Manhattan, talking about . . . Tim Russert. There is something called the Newhouse Media Award, and Tim was being given it later this month. I’d been asked to be one of a dozen or so friends who talked about his specialness, his excellence as a journalist.
I told them he had heroic concentration. He focused. He kept his eye on the ball in an interview, he wasn’t rude or aggressive, but he knew what truth he was trying to get at, and he pressed with complete concentration.
I said he changed the broadcast interview forever by using text. He’d use the words a person being interviewed had written or said years before and months before, and he’d contrast them with the person’s latest statements on the same subject.
It was a great way to elicit truth; it was a great way to bring out something. It was great TV, but better than that, it was great character-revealing.
I left the most important thing for the end. I bumped into him a few months ago in Boston. I was going to give a speech. I was registering, in the lobby of the hotel, and I saw Tim, and thought he must be up there for work, too, or maybe to make a speech at his beloved Boston College.
But no. He was there for fun. His eyes danced as he told me he was up in town to take his son to a rock concert. They were going to go together and then just hang. I thought, as I always did, this is a good father.
Attorney and friend
Robert Barnett
He was a family man. Some of the best memories I have are sitting in Nantucket with him, looking at that beautiful island, and talking about family, not politics.
He was very proud of Luke, who has a radio show on XM. He was so proud that sometimes he would sit in the parking lot of NBC in his car where he had XM and just listen.
Former Clinton press secretary and anchor of
rival ABC Sunday-morning program George Stephanopoulos
I’ll never forget the day our daughter, Elliott, was born and there was a little pillow – Elliott Anastasia Stephanopoulos – from Tim, and it was such a special gift, such a personal one. [My wife] Ali [Wentworth] and I could tell he was happy for us because Luke had given him so much joy.
Former colleague and First Lady of California
Maria Shriver
Tim Russert was one of my closest friends, and he was like a brother to me. He was not only a professional confidant but a personal one. He was always the first person to call me whenever anything happened with my family. And he always called me just to check in and see how I was doing and to encourage me. He was one of a kind to me, and I was lucky enough to have had him as a best friend.
Buffalo Bills executive
Scott Berchtold
We have something called the Wall of Fame, it’s the highest honor in our organization. We put up the name of a player, Daryl Talley. We had the halftime ceremony down on the sidelines, and they mentioned that “Tim Russert is here.”
Then the ceremony is over, and while kickoff is happening, Tim is still on the sidelines, on the field, shaking hands with one of the players, having the time of his life. We were afraid we’d get a delay-of-game penalty.
He was such a huge Bills fan. Once in a while, we had to remind ourselves that this guy is a giant in the media field, because to us he was just neighborhood Tim.
Fox News President
Roger Ailes
He told me a story of driving his son, Luke, in a pickup truck to Boston.
“Here I am in this old pickup truck, and when I pull into a gas station, the guys say, ‘Aren’t you Tim Russert? What are you doing out here in a pick-up truck?’ ” and Tim said, “I was there because I really wanted to be. I had a chance to talk to my son at long lengths of time.”
Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell
The thing everyone keeps mentioning is the famous cutaway shot when I was on his show [and an aide of Powell’s moved the camera to face the Dead Sea as Russert tried to ask one final question].
We had watched this scene replayed on television over and over and over again for weeks. He had some fun with it. The next time I showed up on his show, he gave me as a gift a little model palm tree to remember the occasion. That was pretty funny. He took his work exceptionally seriously, but he didn’t take himself seriously.
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer
When Pope Benedict XVI came to Washington in April, he came to The Catholic University of America for a large meeting with bishops. The president of the university, Father David O’Connell, was told by the Vatican he could invite 10 special guests for a private audience with the pope before that meeting.
Among the 10 special guests were two journalists: Tim Russert and me. We had both given commencement addresses at the school and received honorary degrees. In the small room waiting for the pope, Tim was clearly so excited. He had his rosaries in his hand that he wanted the pope to bless.
As we spoke in that room, I sensed that this was not the Tim Russert we all knew who questioned presidents and senators with tough questions on “Meet the Press.” This was more like little Timmy Russert of Buffalo, New York, just thrilled to meet the pope.
Newsweek political columnist Eleanor Clift
The last time I saw Tim was at the new baseball stadium in Washington where he has season tickets in the front row behind the visiting team’s dugout.
It was Mother’s Day, and he was there with his wife, Maureen, along with James Carville and Mary Matalin, the dueling marital partners who often appear on his Sunday show.
Across the aisle, also in the front row, there sat rival CBS moderator Bob Schieffer and his brother. I felt from my vantage point a half-dozen rows behind like I was watching the Sunday-morning power lineup.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani
The last time I was with him was on May 28, and it was a program at Radio City Music Hall, and he was the moderator of a debate between John Edwards and me, and we spent a lot of time together that night. That’s why I was really just totally shocked by the news that he died. He seemed totally upbeat, very healthy.
During the course of the discussion and interview, which was about an hour and a half, two hours, he told his favorite Yogi Berra story. It’s about Whitey Ford throwing four straight pitches and giving up four straight home runs.
So Casey Stengel comes out of the dugout and asks Yogi, “What does Whitey have?” and Yogi responds, “How do I know? I haven’t caught a pitch yet.”
Additional reporting by Ginger Adams Otis and Janon Fisher