Dedication Draws NBC to Yorba Linda

Inside an air-conditioned trailer in the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace parking lot Thursday morning, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw was on the speaker phone to his senior producer in New York.

“I think you’re going to want to do more than that--we’ve come all this way,” he said, requesting more air time for the dedication story, which he planned to use as the lead story for his live broadcast from the library that afternoon.

“There is an enormous crowd here and it has really captured the fancy of Southern California.”

NBC News had predicted that the Nixon library dedication would be a major story--big enough to warrant sending Brokaw out from New York to anchor the “Nightly News.” Brokaw was astounded that the celebration would generate a crowd of 50,000.

“This is much bigger than the Carter Library dedication,” said Brokaw, tie-less and in shirt sleeves. “The enduring legacy of the Nixon organization is they’re great advance people.”

As the “Nightly News” broadcast started to take shape at 9:35 a.m., the library dedication was vying with Pete Rose’s five-month prison sentence as the top story of the day.

Brokaw, who spent the night in a Beverly Hills hotel, had arrived at the library 15 minutes earlier with Linda Ellman, West Coast producer of the “Nightly News.” Five NBC camera crews were already filming various aspects of the ceremony.

As managing editor of the news show, Brokaw would consult the news wire and keep in touch with his senior producer in New York throughout the day to determine which stories would be included in the half-hour program’s 22 minutes of news.

“The continuing dilemma of our business is we’ve got a fixed amount of time every night,” he said.

At 10:15, Brokaw walked through the maze of TV trucks and vans to the edge of the crowd watching the dedication ceremony.

Standing on a camera case, he took occasional notes as each president spoke.

“I’ve seen thousands of these things and it’s fun,” he said. “I mean, I’m a tourist.”

Brokaw’s presence at the edge of the crowd did not go unrecognized.

“Dan Rather!” exclaimed a young man in a T-shirt standing a few feet away.

Brokaw turned around and grinned.

“Wrong one,” he said. “I’m Brokaw.”

During the ceremony, he signed numerous autographs and obliged several requests for pictures. When the young man in the T-shirt asked Brokaw to sign an autograph, he signed it from “Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw.”

Returning to the trailer after the ceremony, Brokaw wrote the copy for his introduction and worked on his library dedication story.

At 1, Brokaw put on his tie, slipped on his coat and walked over to the library’s reflecting pool where the technical crew had set up lights and cameras for his interview with Nixon.

After shaking hands with Nixon, Brokaw introduced the former President to his mother, Jean, a resident of Leisure World in Laguna Hills, who had her picture taken with Nixon.

On his way back to the trailer, Brokaw said he was “relatively pleased” with his interview.

Nixon is “pretty practiced at what he wants to say,” Brokaw said, “and it’s hard to catch him off guard.”

In the hour and a half remaining until air time, Brokaw and Ellman discussed which portions of the interview would be included in the piece that would air. Brokaw continued to work on his script and reviewed the other stories in the broadcast.

The trailer where Brokaw was working was relatively serene. Not so the tape-editing trailer, where Ellman and an editor were hurriedly editing the 20-minute Nixon interview down to three minutes.

Ten minutes before the 3:30 broadcast, which would air live in New York at 6:30, Brokaw stepped out of his office and announced, “Well, boys and girls, it’s almost time for me to go on television.”

He returned to the reflecting pool where he mounted a platform. A make-up man dabbed his face with powder and a technician ran three different cables up the back of his sport coat.

In the remaining minutes, Brokaw ran a comb through his hair and practiced reading his opening.

And then, with the white farmhouse where Nixon was born as his backdrop, Brokaw gazed into the camera and said in his carefully modulated delivery:

“Headlines: A bad day for Pete Rose. He’s sentenced to prison. A big day for Richard Nixon. He gets a library--and lots of presidential attention.

“Good evening from Yorba Linda, California. Pete Rose and Richard Nixon, love them or hate them, no two men have been more dominant in the national pastimes of baseball and politics. They share something else--a long fall from grace. . . .”