Driven by News, Taken With Writing

Tom Brokaw, who anchors “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw,” is author of “The Greatest Generation,” published recently by Random House. Brokaw, 59, has homes in New York and Montana.

Question: I know writing this book about the World War II generation was emotional for you. How did you manage to get through the interviews?

Answer: Well, I didn’t. I mean, there were times when my wife and daughters often caught me at the word processor kind of staring off at the wall with tears in my eyes.

Q: How did you find time to do this book considering your regular work schedule?

A: Well, I work. I’m not the world’s brightest or fastest person, but I can work. I wrote early in the morning, late at night, hotel rooms, backs of laptop trays on airplanes. I also knew once I got started that because of my day job I would have to take whatever time I had to do it.

Q: I assumed your day job already took up 24 hours.

A: Well, my planning was when I began this project that we would not have the Monica Lewinsky scandal or impeachment hearings or all the other things. I thought I’d go off to Montana for a month and write every day. On the other hand, it was journalistic. It was linear. These were stories that kind of laid themselves out.

Q: If you hadn’t gone into journalism, did you have other dreams or aspirations?

A: Oh, when I was growing up, a lot of my friends thought I would be involved in some public life--politics or a lawyer of some kind. But I grew up in South Dakota, where there were not a lot of role models. My father was a heavy-equipment operator, and we didn’t live in a white-collar world. But my parents had these aspirations for me, and from the earliest age on I had intellectual curiosity and a certain affinity for writing and expressing myself.

Q: What was one of the worst jobs you ever had to do?

A: Well, the worst job I ever had was that I worked for my uncle one summer in 1957 on the end of the air hammer at the bottom of a rock quarry in northern Iowa in the heat of the summer, and I thought if I had to make my living with my hands, I won’t even be able to feed myself.

Q: Exactly what were you doing in the quarry?

A: Well, I was doing kind of an all-purpose labor. I was on the end of an air hammer, breaking up big boulders and on the end of an idiot stick, a shovel, making sure that we were loading the truck correctly, and in those days you didn’t wear hard hats or hearing protection or anything. I got hit by a truck at one point. It was not good casting. But I had a girlfriend in that area, so I was interested in working.

Q: Any lousy jobs during your journalism career?

A: I’ve been, I think, pretty fortunate. I had a kind of a stutter-step when I was in college. My first two years I majored in coeds and drinking beer primarily, so I dropped out of school for a while and I got a job in a little town in Minnesota--it was in Marshall, Minn.--and I lasted for exactly five days. The guy fired me, and I was hitchhiking out of town at the end of that week thinking, “My God, will I ever amount to anything?”

Then when I was in Omaha, I did the morning news and Saturdays, and they kept saying, “Well, we don’t think you’re quite ready to do the evening anchor yet.” I was plucked out of there by a big station in Atlanta, and then a year later I was here in Los Angeles anchoring, so I surprised the people in Omaha how quickly I moved up--once I got out of there.

Q: I hope you’re taking the time to enjoy the success of the book.

A: Well, I wish the world would stop for just a moment so I could savor it, because the problem is that I can’t savor it. I remember one of my friends who was an author said at the end of a book, “Well, I’m gonna go off and I’m gonna row my boat for a couple of weeks.” When I finished my book, I had to jump on the airplane and run to Washington to cover the impeachment.

Q: You should feel proud of yourself.

A: I am. This is not false anchorman humility, [but] I’m pleased about the success of this book because of the people who are in it, and how they’re reacting to the success of it. Many of them have written me, saying, “I didn’t think anyone would ever notice my life,” and that’s touching to me. I like that most of all. I’m also, you know, I dare say, proud that I finally got a book written. It was a passion of mine, and it’s worked out well.

Whatever Works runs Mondays.