Meeting the Press

To reporters and commentators, the cardinal was good copy--and a good friend

By CLAUDIA McDONNELL

Cardinal O'Connor had a lot of friends in a business not known for placid relations with public figures: the media. After his death, the reporters who covered him recalled his strong leadership in public life as well as the care, concern and love that he extended to them after the cameras and microphones were turned off.

Mary Alice Williams, television host on the Odyssey Channel and a former NBC news anchor, was a close friend of the cardinal's.

"I feel so lonely," she said in an interview two days after his death. "There's such a void in my life. The thing that shocked me most was that the sun came up the next morning.

"He was an intellectual giant, a spiritual giant. He was totally nonjudgmental. He would be saddened by behavior he felt was sinful, but he never was judgmental of the person involved. He knew we were all God's children. He underpinned everything he did with love," she said.

She added, "He was like a father to me...He was precious to me, and I'm not alone. I was one of hundreds and hundreds of New Yorkers from all walks of life to whom he devoted his time." So painful were some of the hard times he helped her through that she insisted, "He saved my life."

She never let him forget what happened the first time they met. She was at his Easter Sunday Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral--then her parish church--with her mother. The cardinal, who often singled out dignitaries, announced, "Here, sitting in front, is a woman who, with grace and intelligence and such dignity, delivers the news to millions of people every day. She's here with her mother: Ladies and gentlemen, Jane Pauley."

Ms. Williams laughed as she recalled saying, "Eminence, let me introduce myself to you," when she met the cardinal after Mass in the cathedral garden.

"He cringed and said, 'I know, I know who you are, I'm sorry,' " she said. "From then on we were fast friends."

His most important achievement, Ms. Williams said, was his role in bringing about Vatican recognition of the state of Israel.

"He went in with hobnail boots, and then apologized for stepping on toes," she said.

Rich Lamb, longtime reporter on WCBS Radio, liked the cardinal's vigorous leadership.

"He really poured his personal energy into the Church," he said. "He electrified it. Anyone who thought God was dead came away with a different opinion after they met John Cardinal O'Connor."

"I'm going to miss him as a teacher and a positive influence in my life," Lamb said. "I was surprised to find, as I was filing my initial report about his condition worsening before he died, that I could hardly speak by the end of the report. I was so overwhelmed by emotion…I'm going to miss him so much."

When then-Bishop O'Connor was named to head the Scranton Diocese, Lamb drove there in a snowstorm to get an interview.

"I said, 'Excellency, we'd love to get your voice on tape.' He said he was prohibited by the Vatican from doing interviews till after 8 a.m. It was five till eight. I said, 'I won't use it till 8:10.' He said, 'Shoot.' "

Another time, Lamb did a one-hour interview with the cardinal and later found that it was unusable--a reporter's nightmare--because the sound equipment had been improperly connected.

"I called back and asked if he'd do it again," he said. "He agreed immediately."

Nat Hentoff, the writer and Village Voice columnist, remarked that he has interviewed and personally known many of the famous and talented. Known for espousing unpopular causes, Hentoff is an uncompromising civil libertarian who describes himself as a Jewish atheist. He is the author of a biography of Cardinal O'Connor.

"Of all the people I've known, he stands out," he told CNY. "He had so much integrity. He was always true to himself, and that self was principled. He was not afraid to say he was wrong. He had courage." He said he was particularly impressed by the cardinal's ability to occupy center stage in the media "without in any way being duplicitous or fake."

"There are so few public figures in politics, religion or the arts who can project such authenticity," he said. He used a Yiddish term of approbation: "He was a mensch."

He enjoyed the cardinal's sense of humor and relishes a remark the cardinal made as Hentoff introduced him at a pro-life conference in Toronto about eight years ago. Hentoff, who strongly opposes abortion, had called for more research into nonabortifacient contraception. At the mike the cardinal deadpanned, "I'm delighted that Nat is not a member of the Church. We have enough trouble as it is."

Hentoff was at a prestigious club where the cardinal was to be honored one night when conservatives began criticizing him and other bishops for their pastoral letter on poverty and the economy. Someone called it "a socialist document," and several wondered how a priest, let alone a bishop, could be involved with it.

"They were trying to put him down," Hentoff recalled. Cardinal O'Connor said, "I am a priest. About 900,000 New Yorkers are living in abominable housing" and struggling with all the burdens of poverty. "If I were only to say Mass, I shouldn't be here," the cardinal continued. "My job is to be an advocate and help those people."

Gabe Pressman, veteran WNBC-TV reporter, said in an interview, "I'm very sad because he was unique in my experience. I grew up in the Bronx in an era when Catholics and Jews lived in self-imposed ghettos, separately. They did not talk, they did not understand one another." The Second Vatican Council opened things up, he said, but he added, "I never thought that someday I'd meet a man who was the head of this Church, who grew to have a love and affection for me as I did for him."

Pressman covered the cardinal's visit to Israel in 1988. He remembers that the cardinal "had tears in his eyes" when he left Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

"As a reporter, I tried to be objective," he said. "As a Jew, I couldn't help being affected." He said that Pope John Paul II and Cardinal O'Connor "spoke from the heart" about the relationship between Catholics and Jews. Their efforts to "forge bonds," their calling the Jews "elder brothers" in faith and their repentance for wrongs done to Jews by Catholics are "a historic contribution," Pressman said.

Mary Murphy, television reporter on WB 11, admired the cardinal's "willingness to speak his mind on almost any issue" and "his ability to be true to himself and his beliefs regardless of what the public perception would be."

"He disagreed with officials. That didn't stop him from being friends with them or recognizing their uniqueness as individuals," she said.

Several reporters mentioned the cardinal's rapport with children. Pressman remembers presenting his son Michael, then 2, to the cardinal, who "swooped him up in his arms" and held him high in the air. He also recalled the cardinal's warmth and compassion on a visit to mentally disabled children in northern Israel. Ms. Murphy said her "prize possession" is a photograph of the cardinal holding her son, Anthony James Santino, at the Holy Name Society breakfast at which she was the speaker in 1997. Lamb recalls the cardinal "high-fiving and low-fiving some Irish kids in Belfast."

"They were screaming and laughing and having a great time. And so was he," Lamb said.

Ms. Williams drove into Manhattan the night he lay dying.

"I fought my way through traffic and through the press corps," she said. "I bounded up the stairs of this house where my life had been saved, where my children crawled around on the Persian carpet...Then I stopped. People on the street must have thought I was crazy, but now I know the meaning of the words, 'My heart leaped.' Suddenly I felt incredible joy. I put my hands up in the air and cried, "Goodbye, goodbye!"

It was 8:05 p.m., the moment the cardinal died. Ms. Williams could not know that, but she said she felt "an overwhelming sense of happiness" deep in her heart.

"I believe he knew I was there," she said. "I feel blessed in that. But I feel totally bereft."