Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508300025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GAIL SHISTER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``I'm realistic. I've been realistic all along,'' says ABC News' bombastic pit bull, who underwent successful cancer surgery Aug. 1. ``I came to terms long ago with the idea that we all have to go. The only variable is the time and place.''
Donaldson's boisterous bravado is only skin deep. Off camera, colleagues say the 61-year-old newsman has changed in subtle ways - he's quieter, calmer, more reflective.
``I've always seen the quieter, calmer side of Sam,'' says Cokie Roberts, 51, Donaldson's longtime colleague on David Brinkley's ``This Week.'' ``Sam is a mensch. He just doesn't like to show it. The world sees him as Sam Donaldson, so that's who he is.''
Why?
``You could get into a whole pop psychological thing,'' Roberts says. ``People who have known Sam a lot longer than I have say he has a sense of fatalism because his father and brother died young.''
On Aug. 1, Donaldson had a malignant tumor removed from a lymph node in his groin. Three days later, he checked out of Washington's National Institutes of Health and returned to work, hosting that week's ``PrimeTime Live'' with Diane Sawyer. (``You know me,'' Donaldson says. ``Macho man. Mr. Iron Pants.'')
Spiking a fever Aug. 10, he went back to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his right lung. Released Aug. 18, he did ``This Week'' Sunday and ``PrimeTime Live'' this week.
Although not afraid of death, Donaldson is in no hurry to get there, either. ``I'm 61. I want to be 71, 81. No death wish here. I am aware that this thing could come back, and if it does, it will come back in a big way. That makes me feel quite mortal, obviously.''
Donaldson says the survival rate for those with his type and location of melanoma is 80 percent for two years, 50 percent for 10 years. After his ABC contract expires in June 1997, he wants to reduce his ``PrimeTime'' workload by half, to 12 stories per year.
``I intended to live that way even if I never had the cancer,'' says Sudden Sam, whose wife, Washington TV reporter Jan Smith, is 21 years his junior. ``I want to cut back on the time-consuming things at work so I can do time-consuming things elsewhere.''
``Elsewhere'' is the New Mexico ranch on which Donaldson was born and raised. Over the last six years, Donaldson has expanded it to 45,000 acres, with 2,800 sheep, 400 beef cows and 100 roping steers, give or take the two to five animals killed daily by coyotes.
A rancher for 38 years, Donaldson was stung by criticism when it was revealed that he received federal wool subsidies.
``I found myself described as a multimillionaire city slicker,'' he says. ``I'm truly from the farm and ranch country of New Mexico. Truly, I always intended to get into the ranching business in a full-time way, eventually.
``I'm not doing it for the subsidies, which are being phased out. Yes, I have been taking them. I'm not ashamed of it. It was something built into the ranch. ... I'm not blowing my horn, but I've been in ranching for a long time, and I do it pretty well.''
Disney does information well, he says, which is why he sees ``no downside, at the moment'' in its recent acquisition of Cap Cities-ABC. ``How can we lose? It's not like we've been bought by somebody that makes toasters, pardon the expression.''
Physically, ``I'm feeling terrific, if I do say so myself,'' Donaldson says. ``I'm hobbling around, but each day I hobble less.'' Also each day, he gets less sympathy from his staff. After 48 hours of flowers, nut bread and chicken soup, it's back to ``no respect - the way they've always treated me.''
Don't put colleague Barbara Walters in that category. She sent Donaldson a pair of cotton PJs when he was in the hospital. Tickled by the gesture, he called her and said: ``At last, I get to sleep in Barbara Walters' pajamas!''
by CNB