It's night Side with Dan Way on WBZ Boston's news video.
Dan is off, He'll be off tonight, He'll be off tomorrow and return fresh as a daisy. January one, which is Wednesday. Night Side will begin another year, and I am Morgan filling in tonight. I'll be filling in on Tuesday tomorrow, and I've got a number of things to tell you. I am going to start with doctor David. Nathan was supposed to be on tonight. I know a lot of you heard me go over my Monday schedule, my schedule for tonight. There have been changes in carimebou
sim me. If you're listening the hits, just keep on coming. No, doctor Nathan. He'll be joining me over Mark Luther King weekend. And Jerry Beck, who was scheduled for eight isn't near his phone, so we left the message we will endeavor to get him. My guests replaced Doctor Nathan, Joe Anne Desmond will be joining us at eight point fifteen. All right, so you can't tell the players without a scorecard. I had to make a lot of jumbling around and that's
just been over the past three minutes. But I want to say a few words about President Jimmy Carter, thirty ninth President of the United States, Why Not? The best of book he wrote described him so appropriately. He was the right man for the right time, for the right job. And I know a lot of you listening necessarily don't agree with that, But look at the time he was running and succeeded as president, America had turmoils left, right, up, down and dead center in the middle, and he did
the best he could to address those. He received a peace prize sewing up a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, and after his presidency he continued to work for the people. Now, on Saturday on my show, The Morgan Show, I have Stu Fink on and he's going to be doing his Going but not Forgotten segment for all the people who we lost in twenty twenty four, and there will be a spotlight put on Jimmy Carter. So if you get a chance, I'm on nine to midnight this Saturday and
every Saturday, and you'll hear Stu Fink with that special. Now, when you lose a president, be it after they served, while they were serving. It's a gut punch to America, and probably for most of you listening. Depending on your age, you recall the gut punch of November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, when the news of President John Kennedy's assassination just stunned all of us, and no matter who you were, a child like I was, or an adult, you felt it.
Imagine having the responsibility of telling the people in your area that news. Well, I have a person who had to do that. And as a matter of fact, she was a trendsetter on her own because she was the first female newscaster here in Boston and across the country. And she's here to share with us that memory of what she would through and other hard points of her career. Joined Desmond. Welcome back to WBZ Radio.
Thank you so much, Morgan. I'm delighted to be here. And how well you put that, what you just said, how I had goosebumps. It was beautiful, just what you said.
Well, it is a fact that you had to look into the eye of a camera and tell the people watching that we lost that president.
That's right. And in Boston that was so hard because he was a hometown boy and it was two hundred and fifty thousand people on the other side of the camera that I was talking to. So I was a mess the first time I ever went on the air with no makeup, hair uncombed, no shiny handshaking, scripture clearly upset, no time to go over the script or review which cameras would be on. When I never had such a devastating, exhausting day of reporting in my life. I will never forget that I have a.
News, not news. I have a commercial break to take. Let me take it. When we come back, we'll delve deeper into this situation. If people want to call in six one, two, five, fourteen thirty or eight eight, eight, nine, two, nine, ten thirty, You're more than welcome. Please do call in and we'll share some memories with Joined Desmond, former Channel four newscaster. Time and temperature eight fifteen fifty one degrees.
Now back to Dan Way Live from the Window World Night Sights Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Dan is off tonight. I am Morgan, Morgan White Junior, Philly. I'll be here tonight and tomorrow night. Dan. We'll be back Wednesday. Happy New Year, the first of twenty twenty five. Right now, I've got Joinned Desmond, who was well known. We saw her every Monday through Friday on TV four for the six o'clock and eleven o'clock news when we lost. When I heard yesterday that we lost Jimmy Carter made me think back to that moment. Now, there's no comparison.
Jimmy Carter passed away at one hundred, lived to be a ripe old age of one hundred. But it made me think of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and I have somebody who is right there reporting to all the Bostonians watching TV four that the president had been assassinated. What else can you tell me about that day for you sitting at the anchor desk.
I like the way you put that, because everybody had a different kind of day going on for them, and we all were hit at some point in the day by this incredible news. Here's my story. All of us as reporters at WBZ had to do what we called ride the wires. That was the name of the job, and it meant that you had to listen to the wire machines who's brought in the news, Associated Press, the UPI, United Press International, And that was my job on that day.
It fell to me Lucky me, and I didn't like it because I was working on another story for the evening news that I wanted to focus on it, but I had to listen to it. And these little machines kept rattatatting through the day, very irritating, but sometimes you had to stop and if there was a port and bullet and they would go ding ding ding, three dings, that meant get up here and look at this, and
then we'd do what we call rip and read. That means you ripped it off, you ran into the studio and they read it on the air if it was a hot news story. On this particular day, I heard it go not just three dings ding ding ding, it was ten in a row. What's going on? So I ran up to the machine and I looked at it and it was stopped. I went back and sat down and said, oh, dear, well, I hope nothing's wrong with it.
Started up again, the ding ding ding, and I rushed over to the machine and there was a message on it saying get off. Everybody, get off, And that meant that all of these people who fed news into this machine throughout the nation were told to get off. I just stood there, stunned, I'd never seen anything like this, and I thought, well, who do I call to fix this thing? Then came the words it started up again. Then came the words in capital letters. President Kennedy shot Dallas.
Oh God, no guest or. And then I whirled around and I said, hey, everybody over here. Well, I was the only girl, the only female in the studios, in the newsroom, so they sometimes didn't pay any attention, but today they did the way I've talked, get over here. We all watched the news bullet and come in President Kennedy seriously wounded, and the story unfolded over the next few minutes. Then ed FULI, our news director, came in and gave us each assignments and said, you get out
of here and go interview Tip O'Neill. You go to interview this person. I got Tip O'Neill, whom I adored. Tip was like a big uncle. He was just so sweet. Oh he was a nice man, and he would always say hello, dog, and which is word for me? Then you know, now today's world, when I see so many people say, oh don't you call me darling? I mean, I just loved him. I wanted to just be a little girl and crawl in his lap. He was so sweet, but anyway, this is big Irish face was just swollen
with tears. And when I see his picture at the in Boston, hanging up at the post office, I think it is I often say hello, Doll, and I'll remember that day and the most moving interview he gave me. He'd helped John F. Kennedy rise from his earliest days in Boston politics, gave him all sorts of tips. That's how I got the name tip O'Neil, tips and I loved tips. I loved tip O'Neil. And the tears were pouring down my cheeks too, but luckily my back was
to the camera. And after that interview, we made our way down Boylston Street and did a lot of men on the street interviews, and one that I thought would be unique. I saw carp stopped at a light right about well right about Boylston, so I poked my live mic through the window and I asked the people in there. I heard them saying, oh no, for their reactions to
the news, I do what I get. We all got it all on camera, their shock, their sadness, the radio blurting out the news in the background, all of it, and then the traffic light suddenly changed and I quickly pulled my mic back out and the car drove away, slowly, sadly. Luckily, the camera man I was working with went along with it, and he stayed on that shot the back of the
car as it pulled away. It was a different than the usual man on the street interview, but that unique piece was used several times in the later newscasts at WDZTV over the coming days. And you know, Morgan, that just provided the perfect rap to all the other man on the streets that people were doing. It gave a sad but unique sense of finality. Is that car drove away with the people you knew who were mourning inside. That was the Yeah.
As I watched news today, both national news and local news, people seemed to be comfortable. It's almost like you knew he was in hospice. He was in hospice a long time. People normally are in hospice for a week or two and then pass on, but he was in hospice for at least the year.
So you I didn't already yeah, already anticipating an end to the Jimmy Carter story.
And that's what makes my talking to you so apropos because that's the story that punched America right in the gut, that our president was taken from us by an assassin's bullet.
Right. He didn't have that time to make peace with with whatever needs to be made peace with. He didn't have time to go over his memories. Is I'm sure Jimmy Carter must have done during his time in the hospital, and just just to be able to review your life and to see it in focus. He never had that chance. It was just and the Carter.
Complex for memoirs and memories and his history through politics. Say what, let me take a call. We have news and you and I will stay to the top of the hour. David and San Francisco, Thank you for calling. Welcome to BC, Happy.
New Year, Thank you for going. Happy New too.
Yeah.
I have a story that Jimmy Carter's I find interesting. By the way, he was at the hospitals for twenty two months.
Wow, almost two years?
Yeah, almost two years. Okay. My story is that in nineteen seventy six, when Jimmy Carter was running for president, he had to what's the word lobbie or every state by state, all fifty states to have his name as Jimmy Carter on the ballot because his full name was James Earl Carter. Now was okay. Eight years before nineteen seventy six, in nineteen sixty eight, Martin Luther King was
shot and killed supposedly by a man named James Earl Ray. Yes, and that's why Jimmy Carter wanted to have his name is Jimmy Carter on the ballot so that the voters would not be confused as to him between him and James Earl Ray. So that's my story there.
Interesting fact.
One more thing, One more thing, Uh, Maria, do you remember Carter's little Liverpool pills?
Yes, advertised advertised on yeah, those Amateur Hour.
Oh that's right, I remember that. I remember some uh it sounds like it came from a newspaper. Reporter somewhere made up this thing as pretty clever. And he referred to all the people have voted for Jimmy Carter. He called them Carter's little lever polls. Oh dear, I remember that. I remember that too. So now and you all have a nice New Year's and thank you for taking my call.
It brings the mind to me something else that Jimmy Carter and Robert John F. Kennedy shared, which is neither one of them had the kind of beginning or the kind of preparation for politics that would be the most ideal. In fact, both of them had just the opposite. Jimmy Carter came from a peanut farmer for being a peanut farmer in a small yeah, and exactly. And then Kennedy was from a Catholic background at his he was the first Catholic president in the United States. So they had
a lot to fight against. It wasn't one of those things where it was just an automatic shoe in. Both of them overcame whatever problems they had as young people to go on and become president.
But being Katholic worked against Kennedy, or may not against definitely.
Not for him exactly exactly. And being just a simple peanut farmer didn't help Jimmy Carter either. I mean, you know, it's right. So both of them had to fight their early there, what they came in with, what their their
earlier life was all about. But one thing that I your your caller was saying, these are some of the things that happened as a result of that and I've found in doing some research on this memory that I have of Kennedy's last day was that that the there were always some things that were were good that come out of everything that's bad. That's what I've found again and again, and his sudden death did highlight the need
that we had absolutely no constitutional guidance for change. We had nothing that said here's what happens.
I wait, wait, I'm sorry it. I have to take a news hit, and when we come back, we'll delve into that and talk about Congress making some changes in our history because of the Kennedy assassination. Let me take my break and we'll get back. Time and temperature eight thirty one. Here on Nightside fifty one.
Degrees night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Dan is off tonight and tomorrow night. Actually he was off all last week. My name. I am here holding the fort, and then we'll be back on Wednesday, right where he belongs behind this microphone. But for now, I am here, and I'm joined by a former Channel four employee, Joann Desmond, who was the first female And you know, I'm betting you feel uncomfortable hearing people always lead with that intro for you, because I like what you said that I'm not a woman, I'm a reporter.
Well I am a woman, But first, first of all, I was a reporter, absolutely, absolutely, And you know, in those days we didn't just nowadays, an anchor person as someone who pretty much stays in the studio. They don't tend to leave the studio very often people come to them for interviews, right, But a reporter went out in the field and and saw things and talked with people and saw it with their own eyes, and could had to write their own scripts and get it ready to
come back in. I was an anchor slash reporter. I did both, and that I hadn't done anymore. So it was exhausting, But that's how it went.
We went into the break with this subject, and I want to get right back to it. After the president was assassinated the last of sixty three and beginning in sixty four, Congress passed a couple of bills. Right because of that, let's talk about those.
Bills, Okay, okay, in fact example, okay, well again, Within three months of that, the House and the Senate both agreed on the warning of what was going to become the twenty fifth Amendment, and that would come into being law in February nineteen sixty seven.
Section one of that twenty fifth Amendment made it very clear that the vice president that the vice president became president whenever the president became vacant under these three circumstances, death, resignation, or removal from office. Section two gave the president, on the other hand, the power to name a new vice
president is that became vacant with the he had to have. However, the permission of Congress and the amendments to other sections detail the process for vice president to serve as acting president if the president was then able to perform is or her duties, and how to resolve any disputes about the president's ability to discharge official powers. So the choice that amendment was was, now, did we ever use the twenty fifth Amendment? As the next question? Was it just some obsolete that they did.
Ah.
The twenty fifth Amendment was actually called into play in October nineteen seventy three when Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. Gerald Ford became the new vice president in December of nineteen seventy three, and Ford himself invoked that twenty fifth Amendment nine months later when he nominated Nelson Rockefeller as vice president after Nixon's resignation. So again, when something happens, as I write my book, I'm very interested in what was the upshot of a story that I covered? How
did the sax the nation? And this is a pretty good example our twenty fifth Amendment.
I always found it. I just used the word suspicious that Joel Ford was part of the Warren Commission. In the Warren Commission spent months and months and months studying the Kennedy assassination, and a member of the Warrant Commission became President of the United States through circumstances. I always found that suspicious. But to what end?
But I think you're one of the few people, Stuart, enough to watch that and come up with that suspicions. Congratulations, I didn't. I didn't you thought, But you're right. I mean, that would be suspicious, definitely. I'm going to ask that's what makes you so much fun.
I want to ask you a very sticky question. As a woman. We've heard about all of these circumstances and the me too movement of the recent past five ten years, But back in the mid sixties, did you have to fend off unwanted attention, and that's the best way I can and say it. Like some of the women in the Me Too movement of today, well, it would.
Make a much better story if I could tell you that I had to struggle and fight with my colleagues, if they chased me around the desk, that would be a much more exciting story. But I have to tell you I worked with the best. I have to be honest and say that I had. If I'd had a hashtag from those days as the only woman in broadcast news in Boston, it might read why not me? Because the truth is, my male colleagues and I got along so well. Mostly I think it's because they were highly
principled men of good character. We liked and respected each other. We worked so hard, and I suppose some wag would say, she's we're working so hard, we've got time for an affair. But what the fact is, no one would ever think of that. I knew their wives. Their wives had have me over for dinner. We were it was like a big family. We all liked each other, and most important to me, we respected each other.
I didn't have to experience that at all. You where did you go when you left Boston.
I did get married when I left Boston and went overseas. Overseas, I have to admit the part of my problem was that the Boston Strangler was seemed to be following me and lots of different places in the studio and waiting for me there, and in my home coming to my home, a number of different places. I was just nervous. And I had fallen in love with a young military officer who said, I'm on my way to uncle a Turkey, and I'd like to have you come with me as
my wife. I liked it. I was in love with him, but I was also terrified of the Stranglers, and so I said yes, and we we went off on the other side of the world where I knew i'd be safe. Let me think that was a part of it, frankly, Yeah, let me clarify that.
As you covered the story of the Boston Strangler and It's Heyday, yep, you received unwanted attention from the strangler. You never confronted face to face. But he got into the TV studio, into the he got into the building and onto the set, but never face to face with you. He came into your apartment building knocked on your front door, but thank goodness, you never answered the door.
But when your yeah, yeah, you got confronted by the Boston Strangler, you meant that as the man himself.
Had designs on you. And I don't blame you for being I don't blame you for being afraid and figuring, well, I can get married to a man I love and being a safe location thousands of.
Miles away, right, And we had a happy marriage and we had three beautiful children, so it was fine. But but I can't say for sure it was the Boston Strangler. I have to say that was never proven, but it sure looked mysterious to me, and especially when he came to the studio and my colleagues had seen one of them had seen him, and he thought he was there to learn about the weather. So the description was very
similar to what we know about the Strangler. But again I have to as a Newswoman, I have to say this is not has not and pinned down with absolute proof. But it's sure suspicious. Okay, So enough about that. It it rated, it did get it did leave me something terrible and dangerous, as the Strangler led me to a very happy marriage. So I find again and again things that seemed to be awful, awful.
Overall things absolutely things worked out, things worked out for you. Let me take a break. When we come back, I want you to tell your backstory, college, your backstory, your college, your early career. Time here on night Side eight forty five fifty one degrees.
Now back to Dan ray Line from the Window World Night Sex Studios on WBZ the news radio.
Joan, excuse me, Joan Desmond is my guest? You want to call in? I'm almost out of time with Joe Anne six one, seven, two, five, four ten eight eight excuse me, nine to nine, ten thirty. Oh Morgan, don't come down with laryngitis, please, Joe Anne. Yes, how'd you get started?
Ah? What a good question, What a very good question. I have a phrase that goes through my head, has gone through my head since I was a little girls. I have several, and I think those phrases help me move forward. And one of my favorites was why not there was no when I looked at the newspapers, there was no ad. That's not where you'll see that. There's no never going to be an ad for an anchor woman or a television news reporter in the newspaper. That's
not how it happens. But I did learn another good tip, which was just get into the organization somehow. Get in somewhere at some level. Maybe it's aboutom, but just get in and then keep your ears open. That's just what I did, And later I heard Barbara Walters say the
same thing, that that's how she did it. And so I just started doing some programs over at one TV station and they afterwards, we'd sit around and Julia Childs was in the next studio doing her cooking show We get all her her leftovers, and somebody said to me, G, you know, I hear that WVZ is looking for a new anchor woman, the Betty Adams is getting married and to leave. Wow, that's all I needed. I was out there the next day knocking on the door because I
thought to myself, why not, What can I lose? What if I had to lose? They hired me and I got that wonderful job, dream job because I was in it in the midieu where I could hear this conversation stuff going on after hours after our work was done. Just a casual comment. I hear they're looking for a new one. Oh that's just what I needed.
And Grimal two and Channel four were neighbors.
That's right, But oh do I love Channel four. I'll tell you Channel four gave me the top stories. Well, at first they weren't sure about me, and they gave me the light fluffy stuff, you know, like go out and ride with the race in the coaches with the in the races, go out to Suffolk Downs and do this little the biggest squash in the garden for the summer season. Things like that, and the canaria that can sing traviata and that sort of thing. A little stuff.
But within two months they started me out with a big time stuff. And no one in print journalism could do that. No one else, accept people in television news, which was inventing itself at that time, could get away with what they had me go to. I was so thrilled that they gave me the big stories, the biggest news stories, and had I had to show that I was worth worth their confidence. So it made me carter. But I'll tell you WDZ sent me out to interview
the Versus Mercury astronauts. Of course I did, Martin Luther King. I was so thrilled for that. I did Danny Kay, I did Peter Houston talk Jim Watson, who developed the DNA the double helix, and it just went on and on, the big time stuff. I spent every weekend at the Boston Library because in those days we didn't have internet to look things up, and so I had my own files that I would carry with me in and out every day.
Research.
And you didn't have research.
I'm betting you did not have an intern working for you looking stuff up.
You look stuff up, you bet.
And furthermore, we did our own fact checking. There were no fact checkers in those days, and you didn't want and Ed Fui, our wonderful boss at that time, said, is that a first person or is that second? Did you hear that straight from the from the person who did it or said it, or did you have that as a secondary source. And he wanted always to be sure that we were saying the right thing. And I appreciated that, so we had to do that. I'll tell you one little episode that happened. I think it's so
important you say, tell me about your early life. I think some of the things that happened in my early life had quite a bit of influence on what later happened each of the news shows that I did. I did the morning news, and then they started the news at noon, which they started for Jack Chase and me because our ratings were going up. And so then after I finished those daytime shows, they put me on the
evening news, which was great. But when I joined the evening news team as one of the anchors, I wondered if I'd ever become part of their ritual they had followed the evening news. I thought maybe it was just a guy thing. What they would do is go over to Howard Johnson's next door and they talk over the day before they went back to their homes. They'd sort of get it all off her chests out of their
heads before they went home. And finally they invited me after months and months, They said, do you have to hurry home to it? I said, well, no, I'm just going home. I don't rush, But well, well, why don't you just join us for a few minutes over at Hojo's tonight?
You might just pay it. Wow.
It reminded me of a time when I was about ten years old and one of the boys on our school playground noticed that I could hit a baseball pretty hard, pretty far for a girl. He said, yeah. And Edie asked me if I'd like to play on the all boys team. Was I thrilled? They were about they were two years older than I was, and I kept thinking, I get to play with the big boys.
You made it when you get into a group of boys ten, twelve, fourteen years old through sports and you're judged as an equal. You maybe let me take let me take one more call. Let's go to Millicon and speak to Alex. Alex, you've got Joanne Desmond.
Hi, Joanne. You know I was going to share a quick story. My dad had a restaurant and you talk when you mentioned Jack Chase. He did a story about a Greek immigrant, and I still have their eight I think there are eight millimeteria tapes we have him, you know, digitalized now, but back then on the partment it was the bi centennial, I think. But my dad came over to this country and he was he worked hard, and he had his whole family there, you know, helping out.
And so Jack was really I don't recall too well because I was a little kid, but he he was so gracious and he uh, he sat down with my dad and he did the one of you.
Yes, that's wonderful. What a great story that is. And where did your father come from? Did you say?
Greyeah? We lost we lost him a couple of months ago. But he was ninety six and he was in Harborside for you know, when he came to this country and then he went out on his own and opened up to breakfast shops.
How absolutely marvelous. That's a great American story. And Jack Chase is the doll. And Morgan thought Jack Chase is wonderful because he knew him as when Morgan was a little boy.
Right, Morgan, Yes, I used to watch Getting out of Kindergarten, Unt Maynt Thelma. I had to go to her house because the school was one block away, and she would watch me during the day till my mother got home. And I would love Jack Chase and Dark Kent and Alex. Do you remember Jack Chase's tagline, Uh let.
Me see uh something. Oh shush my memory, I'm drawing blank.
Go out and make it a good day, make.
It a good day. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, right, exactly right.
Right.
Jack was a doll.
He was every bit as kind and generous and charming as you saw him on television. He was the real thing.
Yeah yeah, a waves, goodbye, goodbye, Happy New Year.
H that's a charming story. Don Kent was just as sweet as Jack. Absolutely and I.
Interviewed Don don Kent three times, each time than the last. Now I want to take a news break and wavene and then your phone will ring. It will be me requesting your time on the radio. Okay.
Always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Thank you more, thank you, Joanne.
All right, now I'm gonna get some water from a voice, and next hour we're gonna talk about Boston music performers, the places they played, and the music they made. Time eight fifty eight fifty one degrees