I saw a picture of my old boss Bob Dubill in an American Journalism Review article about how he and other editors have improved USA Today. How about making
a side trip to Nauru?I worked for Bob when I covered the Hawaii congressional delegation for Gannett News Service. He's the finest journalist I know. AJR's description of him as "much loved" would be laughable applied to most editors, but it's on the mark for Bob.
He patiently suffered fools by the busload at USA Today before somebody finally grew a brain and made him executive editor. When he got the promotion, everybody who ever worked for him thought, "There is a God."
For me, Bob brings airplanes to mind. He was like the boss in the TV commercial who carries a stack of airline tickets in his hip pocket to keep his people in touch with their customers.
Bob once heard I was making a trip home to Hawaii. He suggested that since I would be in the neighborhood, I should swing by Nauru to check out a dispute between its president and our Guam newspaper.
I explained that the Pacific is a big ocean and that Hawaii is closer to San Francisco than to Nauru. "OK," he said, "then why don't you visit Guam, too, and go to Nauru from there?"
I had to admit that while Hawaii is closer to Denver than to Guam, Nauru is slightly closer to Guam than Hawaii is to San Francisco. So I went to Nauru. The president refused to see me and I was stuck with nothing to do for two days but try to avoid stepping in the bird guano the tiny island is made of.
When another reporter had to pull out of a trip to West Virginia to cover the governor's race between Jay Rockefeller and Arch Moore, Bob sent me in her place. He asked that I use her ticket instead of getting my own so he wouldn't have to bother with a refund on hers.
I spent the short flight fretting about flying under somebody else's name. I worried that the plane would crash and I would die with a ticket in my pocket saying my name was Angela. A rescuer would find my body and say, "That's the ugliest woman I ever saw." Then I remembered I would be crashing in West Virginia and needn't worry about that.
Bob sent me to Phoenix to cover for him on a speech he was supposed to give the next day at a nuclear power conference. He was unsure of the subject of the speech, which probably explained why he didn't want to go. "You can wing it," he said. "No sweat."
I found myself on a panel with guys from the New York Times and Omni Magazine to talk about the future of nuclear power. They announced to the audience that I was sitting in for Bob, but left his name card in front of me.
The guy from the Times delivered a 30-page paper that could have gotten him a master's degree from Princeton. The guy from Omni put on a 45-minute multimedia spectacle.
WHEN my turn came, it took me about 38 seconds -- speaking very slowly -- to tell them all I knew about the future of nuclear energy.
Most conferees averted my eyes and shook their heads in pity when they saw me after the speech. Only a woman from a nuclear trade group commented out loud on my performance. "Boy, that must have been really humiliating for you," she said.
I was never happier to be on an airplane leaving a town. But the woman from the trade group was on the same plane, jabbering about my speech all the way back to Washington. When we finally parted company at Dulles Airport, she said, "Mr. Dubill, someday you'll be able to tell this story and laugh about it."
There is a God.