Jennings Honored At Memorial
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ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was remembered at a memorial service yesterday as a down-to-earth man who interviewed presidents and kings but remained genuinely fascinated by and inquisitive about the lives of ordinary people – and as a lover of great music.
The memorial, which drew about 2,000 people to Carnegie Hall, included eulogies from friends and colleagues of the television news star. It also featured an impressive and eclectic series of musical tributes from such luminaries as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, country musician Alison Krauss, and jazz musicians Wynton Marsalis and Clark Terry.
Jennings, who anchored ABC’s flagship “World News Tonight” broadcast for more than two decades, died on August 7 following a brief battle with lung cancer. He was 67.
Alan Alda, the actor and director and a longtime Jennings friend, drew from his pocket a copy of the U.S. Constitution that he said Jennings had given him and read from Article 2 about the president’s power to make recess appointments.
“There’s a vacancy now no president can fill, no power on earth can fill,” he said, catching the audience off guard. “Others will step in and do his job with excellence, but no one can replace the unique person who was Peter.”
The president of ABC News, David Westin, described Jennings as “a true anchor in every sense of the word.” He also alluded to Jennings’s role as a bulwark against sensationalism in television news. “As our anchor, he would keep us from drifting from time to time into currents that seemed pretty powerful but were not leading us to any good place.”
One of ABC’s best-known journalists, Ted Koppel, said he, like millions of others, fell under the sway of Jennings’s personal magnetism and charisma. “I felt a thrill whenever I saw him,” Mr. Koppel said. “Even in his last day, he still filled a room.”
Mr. Koppel, who started out with Jennings at ABC in the 1960s, recounted that women were particularly receptive to Jennings’s charms. “Peter was famously, even notoriously, attractive to women. Even so, he married only four of them,” the “Nightline” anchor quipped.
Among those present was Jennings’s widow, Kayce, who was remarked on by a number of speakers for the joy she had brought to Jennings’s life and the steadfastness and tenderness of her care for him during his final struggle.
Several noted that Jennings, who never graduated from high school, compensated for his lack of a formal education by becoming a tireless student of history. Robert Iger, president of the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, said the breadth of Jennings’s knowledge was on display when the anchor hosted a 24-hourlong broadcast to usher in the year 2000. “I just thought how lucky we are to have Peter,” the television executive recalled. “He just owned the world that night.”
Others marveled at how Jennings maintained a common touch, even though he traveled in elite circles and made a reported $9 million a year. Two speakers who had Jennings as a dinner guest in their homes recalled occasions when the television anchor insisted on washing the dishes.
An advocate for the homeless, Mary Brosnahan Sullivan, recalled that Jennings’s support for her work went far beyond lending his name to fund-raisers for the cause. “Peter would literally end his broadcast and run across town, hop in a van, and go out and deliver meals,” said Ms. Sullivan, the executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless.
Jennings, who lived in recent years on the Upper West Side, insisted on stopping to talk to those receiving the meals. He believed “homeless people are first and foremost people,” Ms. Sullivan said. “He listened to their stories.”
Jennings was born in Canada but became a naturalized American citizen in 2003.
A senior producer and longtime foreign editor of Jennings’s broadcast, Thomas Nagorski, said the anchor was downright sentimental about the duties of citizenship. “This was the only person I knew who got weepy talking about his service on jury duty,” Mr. Nagorski said.
There were several nods yesterday to Jennings’s Canadian heritage. Two troopers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stood guard as bagpipers from the New York City Police Emerald Society’s Pipe and Drum Corps opened the ceremony. The programs for the service were also emblazoned with uniquely Canadian words, said to be the anchor’s last: “I hate dirty hockey.”
Toward the end, the memorial included remarks by Jennings’s two children, Christopher and Elizabeth, who clearly inherited or learned their father’s feel for the language. The final musical number was a rousing rendition of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”