Tim Russert was the only newsperson I trusted to tell the whole truth, 100% of the time. I am so saddened by his loss because I have no one to believe anymore. God help us all.
God, Politics and the Making of a Joyful Warrior
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He did quiet charity work at St. Ann's home for orphans in Washington, among other causes. "He was a great reporter," said McCarrick, "but he never stopped being a great human being." (It is true that the two can be mutually exclusive.) "As cardinal, I was always having to ask favors of him—could we use his name for this charity, or would he be willing to attend this affair or that affair—and he always tried to be as helpful as he could be."
In a way, Russert was the secular pastor of a circle of Catholic politicians and journalists in the capital. When the priest-sexual-abuse scandal broke a few years ago, McCarrick convened a private meeting of Catholic opinion makers. "It was Russert, James Carville, Cokie Roberts, the late Mary McGrory, Bob Novak, Kate O'Beirne and me," recalled the political commentator Mark Shields. "What a group." But it was Russert's group, and he loved it, and everyone in it. To get a sense of that world, imagine if Allen Drury had written "The Last Hurrah."
Russert was one of the least self-important important people in the capital. Susan Gibbs, the director of communications for the archdiocese of Washington, remembers introducing him to a nun at a Catholic event. The nun had never heard of him, but was intrigued that he worked in television. "You have video cameras?" the nun asked Russert. Yes, he said, he did. "I might need to use them sometime," she said. "How do I reach you if I want to borrow them?" "Call Susan," Russert replied. "She'll know how to reach me."
Because he had to work on Sundays, he liked to go to what he jokingly called the brief "drive-by mass" at Georgetown University Medical Center on Saturday afternoons. On Sunday mornings, there were often visiting priests and nuns watching the broadcast in the studio at NBC News in Washington, and, his work done for the morning, Russert would cheerily pose for photographs and swap stories. (He never quite got over the fact that meatless Fridays had turned out to be a human, not a divine, invention.)
He prepared for broadcasts the way he had prepared for mass back in his altar-boy days. "Part of your responsibility was to be punctual," he wrote. Sometimes he had to go wake the assistant pastor, who liked his sleep; if Russert did not do what he was supposed to do, the service would not happen. "It all seemed so natural then, but when I look back on it, I'm struck by how much responsibility we had," he wrote. "We weren't even in high school yet, but age-old traditions with great meaning depended on our showing up on time and doing the job exactly right."
His imagination was never far from those days, or from the martyred president. Years after he left Buffalo, Russert lunched with Sister Lucille and Dave Powers, JFK's longtime friend and aide. Later, Powers sent Russert a quotation that Kennedy had had inscribed on a silver mug for Powers's birthday: "There are three things which are real: God, Human Folly, and Laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third." Russert loved it.
Just before he collapsed in the NBC News bureau in northwest Washington—he was taken to the hospital by his longtime executive producer, Betsy Fischer—he had sent Sen. Edward Kennedy, who is recuperating from surgery for brain cancer, a set of rosary beads blessed by Benedict XVI. The Hail Mary Russert recited so often ends this way: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death."
With Pat Wingert, Suzanne Smalley, Brian No and April Yee
© 2008
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