Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508180022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN MARTIN PROVIDENCE JOURNAL-BULLETIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I never understood your pain. Maybe it's because we spoke on the phone only a half dozen times during that period when your struggle to balance career and motherhood resulted in your being fired from ``60 Minutes.''
Maybe it's because I'm a man - albeit a working father.
But now that I've read a book by Washington Post reporter Elsa Walsh, I better understand what you were going through.
Walsh profiles Rachel Worby, conductor of the Wheeling (W.Va.) Symphony and wife of West Virginia Gov. Gaston Caperton; Alison Estabrook, a surgeon at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital; and Meredith Vieira, who went on to great things at CBS and now at ABC News' ``Turning Point.''
There is a passage in ``Divided Lives'' (Simon & Schuster; $23) that says it all about Vieira's frustration:
Walsh and Vieira are sitting in the playroom at Vieira's home in Irvington, a few miles outside Manhattan in Westchester County.
Veira had left ``60 Minutes'' and was anchoring CBS' 6 a.m. weekday newscast. Her 4:30 a.m.-to-8 a.m. news shift was done. She was tired. She never napped, and she stayed up late getting the kids to bed before spending precious uninterrupted minutes with her husband. Most of the time she was too tired to benefit from the ``perfect'' arrangement that allowed her to earn a big salary in a prestigious job and spend her days with her two children. (Vieira has since had a third child.)
It wasn't perfect.
Vieira was unhappy being a news reader. And she was uncomfortable with the choice she was forced to make.
``I'm at such a loss now,'' she told Walsh. ``I have no idea what the right answer is because this isn't it. But the old way wasn't it either.''
Vieira, Walsh writes, ``cringed when interviewers suggested her career had taken a major tailspin, and she hated it when her colleagues complimented her on being such a good mother.''
Vieira began to cry. ``I love my kids so much,'' she said, sobbing. ``I blame myself sometimes that I just can't seem to do this. For some reason I just can't seem to find the measure that works.''
I started this column with an apology because I have a better idea now why Vieira was crying. I learned from the book that Vieira miscarried three times before her first child, Ben. After returning to ``60 Minutes,'' she had a fourth miscarriage before giving birth to her second child, Gabe.
And I didn't know that Vieira's husband, Richard, has multiple sclerosis.
I'm sorry because it never occurred to me that Vieira was often as unhappy at home as she was at work.
Somehow I thought that once home, she could say, ``Oh, what the heck. Not being a `60 Minutes' correspondent is not a big deal.'' I guess I thought that being home with the kids was some kind of grand consolation prize that would make up for the loss she felt as a professional who had invested years in her career.
I called Vieira to ask her how she felt about the deeply personal nature of the book.
``It's hard to read,'' she said. ``It's weird to see what you've said come back to you.
``I met her [Walsh] when I was pregnant with Gabe, and she interviewed me over the next two years. She asked a lot of tough questions. It was almost like being with a therapist.''
As to the incident in the playroom, Vieira said it was a moment of exhaustion and frustration. ``I tend to be emotional. But ... you think you're doing fine until you step back for a minute and realize it never will be fine. You'll always be dropping something somewhere, and I was feeling that frustration.''
Vieira says she thinks the book may open some eyes, but she doubts it will make a difference. The conflict will always be there. ``I think [employers] get it on one level, and [when they say,] `We really do want it to work for you,' they mean it. But the demands, the pressure, the dynamics of the work place take over.''
One thing about the book thrills Vieira. You may recall that her boss, ``60 Minutes'' executive producer Don Hewitt, came under fire for dismissing her when she asked to extend her half-time commitment to the show so she could have a second child.
Defending himself, Hewitt boasted that he'd bent over backward for Vieira, including setting up an office nursery.
``I am so thrilled that somewhere in print now it says there never was a nursery,'' Vieira said.
``I know it's a stupid point, but it is very important to me because it was so symbolic of the bullthat surrounds the rewriting of history.
``I'm glad someone has said it was never true to begin with.''
by CNB