THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 4, 1997 TAG: 9701040294
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 82 lines
Name any headliner of the past decade or two in American culture and odds are he or she has been portrayed by Maureen Orth.
Journalist Orth, usually exuberant as a spring-singing meadow, writes with wintry detachment about such icons as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Margaret Thatcher.
Her most recent subject for Vanity Fair is Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. Irish sources close to him told her he had said the article was ``dead on'' accurate.
During her more than two months of work, the challenge, she said, was to convey understanding of the complexities in Northern Ireland and be faithful to both sides.
Orth will speak Wednesday at the Women Review's noon luncheon in the Norfolk Airport Hilton. Men also would do well to attend. For reservations at $18.50 a person call 490-7812 - as I just did.
Growing up, Orth read everything. Twelve volumes of My Book House set the footings. At 8, she read articles in her father's Saturday Evening Post, she remarked Thursday during a phone interview.
Early, she became a political junkie. She and her father viewed on a neighbor's TV the presidential nominations in 1952 of Democrat Adlai and Republican Ike.
Like her independent minded dad, she had many opinions. Meals featured a running debate. When she was 10, a surrogate grandfather told her: ``I think I know what you're going to be when you grow up: a prosecuting attorney!''
At JFK's call to ask what you can do for your country, she joined the Peace Corps, which ``just threw you into a situation and whatever happened was what you made happen.''
In Colombia's coffee fields, the people wanted to build a school. She obtained aid from coffee growers. ``When I left we had two classrooms, two teachers, and 35 students. When I went back after 17 years, there were a dozen teachers, five classrooms, and 130 students.
``It was one of the greatest times of my life. They had an entire day in my honor: a 12-act presentation, a serenade, a toast, a Mass.''
They named the school for her.
``It was a profound experience. It changed my way of viewing the world. It opened my mind, taught me another language. I learned you find human qualities in a tiny hut in the mountains or in a palace.
``It was good training for reporting. It put yourself in other people's shoes. It taught you to be at home in almost any situation.''
Totally ``by accident'' she turned to writing. Enrolled in graduate studies at the University of California, she tired of reading 40 books on Latin America - ``utterly boring'' compared to her work with the Peace Corps. She took journalism and graduated with honors in 1969 with a master's degree in filming documentaries.
But writing, thanks to a chance teacher, captivated her. For advice on her first assignment, she went to the only journalist she'd met, a lecturer on Malcolm X.
``He underlined passages in my interviews and said `Now go write the story.' In a week I returned and he cut and pasted paragraphs. It got a great reception. He helped me with the next two stories as well. Then he told me I was on my own.
``And do you know who he was?'' she asked.
``Alex Haley!'' she exclaimed, laughing. ``He was carrying around his seventh draft of `Roots.' ''
Prior to joining the staff of Vanity Fair in 1988, she worked with a dozen media. In covering the 1980 Democratic convention in New York, she met on the first day Tim Russert, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press.
``We kept running into each other every day and he'd give me a clever comment, or a bit of analysis, funny things, and insights.
``It's a great way to flirt with a reporter, give her a great quote!''
After three years of a long distance courtship with her in New York and him in Washington, they married. With their son Luke, 11, theirs is a family of reading, writing and sharing.
The reporter mentioned the American panorama of articles.
``For whatever reason, God's mission for me is just to throw me in the middle of the action,'' she said.
``It's time to write a book. There's an entire history of the '70s in a basket in my basement. My resolution is to get that basket, filled with notes and interviews, and figure what to do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by EIKA AOSHIMA
Maureen Orth will speak Wednesday at the Women Review's noon
luncheon at the Airport Hilton.