Wisdom worth sharing, words worth remembering.
Thanks to the Interstate Highway System it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.
I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.
Since my retirement I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens.
I can't say that I've changed anybody's life ever and that's the real work of the world if you want a better society.
I don't have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this so people can know about everything that goes wrong.
When we become a really mature grown-up wise society we will put teachers at the center of the community where they belong. We don't honor them enough we don't pay them enough.
You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.
I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I don't know where I got the idea that it was a romantic calling.
Now that I look back on it having retired from being a reporter it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7.
When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies.
It was so much fun to have the freedom to wander America with no assignments. For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself.
