THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607100045
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 121 lines
IN MORE THAN two decades of work for NBC News, Betty Wells was the acknowledged master of art at a glance.
Freezing a moment of high drama with frenzied pen strokes - at a sensational murder trail or a desk-banging debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate - sometimes gave her cramped fingers and tennis elbow.
You'd think that years of split-second art executed in a whirling centrifuge of high-energy news would have taken its toll over the years.
I expected to find a woman with shaking hands, possibly a tic, and hair shooting from the head like electric wires.
But no, there she was at the door of her 200-year-old mansion in Virginia Beach looking trim and composed, every hair in place, exuding serenity like some of her charming paintings of little-seen places in the White House.
(Those scenes, incidentally, formed an important segment of a broadcast by NBC's ``Today'' show.)
A two-time Emmy winner for her NBC News art, Wells retired last year. Last month she received the distinguished alumnus award for 1996, given by her alma mater, the Maryland Institute of Art.
She now paints for herself but has agreed to do special assignments for NBC from time to time.
One of her most interesting assignments - and one of the most wrenching emotionally - came near the end of her extraordinary career: the 1995 trial of Susan Smith for the murder of her two sons.
Smith was charged with first-degree murder for causing her car to roll down a boat ramp into a lake near Union, S.C., while the two boys were locked inside.
Wells worked with NBC reporter Bob Dodson on the story. ``That pleased me because Bob is a storyteller rather than a mere reporter,'' she said. ``He incorporated the feelings and relationships in a small town attempting to cope and comprehend. He told it as the small-town tragedy it was.''
One of her drawings depicted Smith with head bowed, sobbing uncontrollably as a diver testified about seeing the little white faces behind the car windows.
``At that moment nearly everyone in the courtroom was in tears,'' Wells recalled.
She had begun the trial feeling little sympathy for Smith, she said. But at the end she was glad Smith's life was spared.
``She loved her father who committed suicide. Her mother was cold and calculating. There was evidence her step-father had taken sexual advantage,'' she recalled.
When Smith was given a life sentence, everyone in the courtroom seemed to be happy she would not be executed, Wells said, because with such a background a tragic ending seemed inevitable.
``One juror described her as a walking gun about to go off,'' Wells recalled.
On assignment, Wells resembled a gunslinger, entering a courtroom or a hearing room at the U.S. Capitol with a cartridge belt stuffed with markers instead of bullets.
``In time people got used to that belt, but the first time I wore it a marshal made me open each of the markers to make sure there was no weapon inside,'' she said.
Accuracy and speed are the qualifications for a news artist, and Wells was not only accurate, but the fastest draw in the business.
Speed was her hallmark, even as a scholarship student at the Maryland Institute of Art.
``My instructors used to say, `Where's the fire, Betty. Please take your time. . . . Look and study,' '' she recalled.
In 1974, while she was working for a couple of Washington television stations and The Washington Post, NBC asked her to submit some drawings because the network needed an expert talent to cover the Watergate scandal.
Her work was so polished that NBC executives in New York asked if the news drawings she submitted hadn't been embellished after they had been dashed off for a deadline.
When she replied that no, they were working sketches, she was hired.
``I did about a thousand drawings of people involved with Watergate,'' she said. ``I recently sold them all to a collector in Cincinnati.'' She conceded that they fetched a handsome sum.
Although television cameras have made their way into courtrooms and most significant congressional hearings are televised, there will always be a demand for news artists, Wells believes.
``TV news is visual, and a lot of news doesn't get on the air because there are no pictures available,'' she said.
So, although her assignments have included some major courthouse headliners - Watergate, the Spiro Agnew indictments and the John F. Hinckley Jr. trial - many of her drawings were of unobserved events.
A good example is the series of drawings she did for NBC depicting the aborted attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran, including helicopters stalled by blowing sand.
Prior to an important debate or courtroom proceeding, Wells gathers as many photos of people likely to be involved as she can.
``Sometimes I'm working at a great distance from the subjects,'' she explained. ``I want to know whether a senator's hair comes to a widow's peak, or whether that's a real beard under a defendant's chin or a 5 o'clock shadow.''
The famous and infamous whom she sketched invariably made their way to her seat - the one with the portfolio of pens, pencils and other art supplies tucked beneath it.
``They want to know how you have drawn them,'' she said. ``Nearly all of them do. And the lawyers generally want to purchase your drawings as souvenirs when a trial is over.''
And she has frequently become friends with courtroom defendants of prominence.
``I became friendly with General Westmoreland and his wife during his libel suit against CBS,'' she recalled.
She became so chummy with John Ehrlichman, the Watergate defendant, that when her son, then in the Navy, came to visit her for Christmas vacation, Ehrlichman insisted on giving him a seat reserved for a member of his family in the courtroom.
``The courtroom was always crowded, and he'd never have gotten seated otherwise,'' she said.
Oliver North - of Iran-Contra fame - was probably the coolest and most aloof defendant she has known. But Adm. John Poindexter was just the opposite, she said, warm and congenial.
Wells' talent is of such a high order that her sketches of the U.S. Supreme Court justices and the building's architectural features were on display for more than a year at the Supreme Court Gallery. An admirer of artist Honore Daumier, Wells has done a book of politically satirical cartoons about Washington, and is an award-winning muralist. ILLUSTRATION: Betty Wells' rendering of Susan Smith during Smith's
1995 trial. by CNB