senators John McCain and Bob Kerrey.
I sit through the show organizing fact index cards—going over every detail for the panel. If we didn’t get it right, we will know right away. Ambassador Pickering is visibly uncomfortable. Bobby Muller is visibly pleased. There are objections to several of our assertions, but after the show airs and after a long campaign by members of Congress, the United States changes its policy and sends several million dollars in humanitarian aid directly into Cambodia. In the scheme of things, not a life-changing amount, but it is groundbreaking. From the Killing Fields wins an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia Gold Baton—journalism’s Oscar.
I fell in love on this trip in the same heady way as with Augie Albanese at sixteen—remote and dreamy, blurred at the edges. This first assignment, like my first love and first heartbreak, the benchmark for everything after. I don’t remember the heat or the dust or mosquitoes or the anxiety I might have felt being alone and twenty-five in a distant pocket of Asia. I remember the refugee camps, the hospitals, young boys holding up heavy guns on their shoulders. I remember Sathern and guerrilla fighters and arranging interviews and chartered flights. It was an experience . The unique experience of stepping into something extraordinarily different and of acquiring an understanding of it. This is the lure for the curious—marked by their desire for information. A singular experience and nothing in my past to relate it to, so when I came back I had little more to tell my family than that I had stayed at the Oriental Hotel, where famous writers used to stay.
I was a long way from my internship, from Chris Nucci on the hurdy-gurdy in Kingston. I had been at ABC three years and wore the uniform of journalists now—khaki pants and a button-down shirt. I was making $24,000 a year as a PA. I was exactly where I wanted to be. All that angst about getting out of Suffern, and it had been as simple as getting on a plane. I was at the beginning of a whole new life. I was seeing where all of this would lead, enjoying the ride, and then a man walked into the room. Or, to be accurate, I walked into the room, and the man stood and reached for my hand.
3
How did a girl from Suffern meet a man with Polish royal lineage going back four centuries? Anthony Stanislas Albert Radziwill, a prince, like his father and grandfather before him. This is where fairy tales come in handy, because the real story is somewhat dull. No glass slipper, white horse, or wicked stepmother. We met at work.
In fact, we met over a murder. In March 1990, Lyle and Erik Menendez were charged with killing their parents with shotguns while they were watching television in their den. And almost everyone in the news business flew to Los Angeles to cover it. “ Primetime needs to borrow you,” my boss had said after From the Killing Fields aired. “It’s four weeks in Beverly Hills, the Menendez murder.” I flew to Los Angeles and went to a suite at the Four Seasons— Primetime Live ’s makeshift office—and met Anthony.
We had both been at ABC for three years. Anthony was working for Primetime with Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer, and I had just started with Peter Jennings Reporting . He was an associate producer when we met, and I was a production associate, a rung lower.
By this time I had adopted some things—a wry sense of humor and a brown-suede miniskirt, for instance, and the bravado gained by a bit of travel. I was just back from six weeks in Southeast Asia, and no one in the Four Seasons suite knew I’d never been so far from home. I have seen some things now, I was hoping to suggest in my manner. I know some things, too.
We couldn’t have come from two points farther apart, Anthony and I, but I walked into the hotel suite flush with the slippery confidence of youth and an award-winning documentary under my belt. And he took it all in with his own brand of self-possession.
“Hi,
I sit through the show organizing fact index cards—going over every detail for the panel. If we didn’t get it right, we will know right away. Ambassador Pickering is visibly uncomfortable. Bobby Muller is visibly pleased. There are objections to several of our assertions, but after the show airs and after a long campaign by members of Congress, the United States changes its policy and sends several million dollars in humanitarian aid directly into Cambodia. In the scheme of things, not a life-changing amount, but it is groundbreaking. From the Killing Fields wins an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia Gold Baton—journalism’s Oscar.
I fell in love on this trip in the same heady way as with Augie Albanese at sixteen—remote and dreamy, blurred at the edges. This first assignment, like my first love and first heartbreak, the benchmark for everything after. I don’t remember the heat or the dust or mosquitoes or the anxiety I might have felt being alone and twenty-five in a distant pocket of Asia. I remember the refugee camps, the hospitals, young boys holding up heavy guns on their shoulders. I remember Sathern and guerrilla fighters and arranging interviews and chartered flights. It was an experience . The unique experience of stepping into something extraordinarily different and of acquiring an understanding of it. This is the lure for the curious—marked by their desire for information. A singular experience and nothing in my past to relate it to, so when I came back I had little more to tell my family than that I had stayed at the Oriental Hotel, where famous writers used to stay.
I was a long way from my internship, from Chris Nucci on the hurdy-gurdy in Kingston. I had been at ABC three years and wore the uniform of journalists now—khaki pants and a button-down shirt. I was making $24,000 a year as a PA. I was exactly where I wanted to be. All that angst about getting out of Suffern, and it had been as simple as getting on a plane. I was at the beginning of a whole new life. I was seeing where all of this would lead, enjoying the ride, and then a man walked into the room. Or, to be accurate, I walked into the room, and the man stood and reached for my hand.
3
How did a girl from Suffern meet a man with Polish royal lineage going back four centuries? Anthony Stanislas Albert Radziwill, a prince, like his father and grandfather before him. This is where fairy tales come in handy, because the real story is somewhat dull. No glass slipper, white horse, or wicked stepmother. We met at work.
In fact, we met over a murder. In March 1990, Lyle and Erik Menendez were charged with killing their parents with shotguns while they were watching television in their den. And almost everyone in the news business flew to Los Angeles to cover it. “ Primetime needs to borrow you,” my boss had said after From the Killing Fields aired. “It’s four weeks in Beverly Hills, the Menendez murder.” I flew to Los Angeles and went to a suite at the Four Seasons— Primetime Live ’s makeshift office—and met Anthony.
We had both been at ABC for three years. Anthony was working for Primetime with Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer, and I had just started with Peter Jennings Reporting . He was an associate producer when we met, and I was a production associate, a rung lower.
By this time I had adopted some things—a wry sense of humor and a brown-suede miniskirt, for instance, and the bravado gained by a bit of travel. I was just back from six weeks in Southeast Asia, and no one in the Four Seasons suite knew I’d never been so far from home. I have seen some things now, I was hoping to suggest in my manner. I know some things, too.
We couldn’t have come from two points farther apart, Anthony and I, but I walked into the hotel suite flush with the slippery confidence of youth and an award-winning documentary under my belt. And he took it all in with his own brand of self-possession.
“Hi,
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