Denny Heck Wow

[calimary]

48. Soitenly!

I got to NBC after all that went down. But all those faces and names were already familiar me because, being in L.A., I'd grown up watching KNBC (the local NBC O&O) and the NBC Nightly News that followed.

I remember Steve Sung being interviewed and showing his own arm that had been wounded by gunfire. He described looking at it, that day, while trying to keep his head down, since the gunfire was still happening and he was certain he was going to be dead soon. And he saw what he described as this "piece of meat." ON his arm. Or what was left of the musculature on his arm. It had been shot, shredded, just hanging loose, and his only thought was to rip it off completely and be done with it. Much later, of course, he'd have those scars, and a big, visible chunk of the muscles of his forearm - missing.

That account never left me. I couldn't get it out of my mind. Still can't, lo these many years later. Jonestown was 1978.

And I remember the local anchor, Kelly Lange, who often filled in on the "Today" show and even sometimes on the "Nightly News". She was very popular out here on Channel 4, what with her friendly and congenial on-air personality. She was pretty much the same way off-camera. She had been dating Bob Brown, the cameraman who got killed covering Jonestown that day. For weeks afterwards, her on-air demeanor was noticeably subdued. She told the story of being called - I think it was by Carl Reiner's wife, who said "No more GLOOM!" And promptly invited her over for dinner - where they and several of their comedy friends literally pelted her with jokes and gags for several hours, and kept her laughing almost nonstop. She talked about that on the air and said it helped her snap out of it. She also decided to write a book about the man she loved and lost.

I don't know whatever happened to the book, but she went on to a continuing prominent career, and after that night with her private show with all those comedians, she visibly brightened up. It did change her mood.

It was mind-blowing - working with some of those people who'd been there and survived that. You gain a kind of reverence for them and what they bore witness to, and a deeper appreciation of how dangerous the journalist's job can truly be. I think back to Bob Flick, the producer of Don Harris's segment, for which Bob Brown and Steve Sung were the camera crew. Harris and Brown died. Flick and Sung were injured but survived. And you've gotta know that, as hard-bitten a pair of news veterans as they were - you KNEW it had affected them profoundly. It must have been like covering a war. Some of 'em I worked with HAD covered war, and lived to tell about it. You KNOW it affected them. How could it not?