completely erroneous) perception of the disease.
But as time passed, I gradually came around to the view that if I talked about my experience in public, it just might help others come to a better and more accurate understanding of depression. Thus, for the past ten years or so, I’ve done just that, on Larry King’s television show and similar interview programs, as well as at other public forums. Though I’ve resisted the various efforts to depict me as a poster boy for depression, I have agreed to speak at occasional fund-raising events, and it was at these fund-raisers that I began running into Rosalynn Carter. As I soon learned, she has been vigorously engaged in programs to eradicate the stigma attached to depression and simi-
[ 50 ]
F I R S T C O U P L E S
lar afflictions ever since her years in the White House, when she served as the honorary chairperson of the president’s Commission on Mental Health.
I should point out that her dedication to helping the less fortunate is a moral imperative she shares with her husband, who is living testament to the belief that presidents can go on to serve their country with impressive distinction even after they’re voted out of office.
In fact, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have been such paragon role models that they may have set the gold standard for conduct and achievements by former first families. Since leaving Washington, the ex-president has been in the forefront of the vigilant effort to assure honest elections in emerging democracies around the globe, and that is only part of his larger commitment to the cause of human rights. In addition, he has brought his own hammer-and-nails labor to the task of building habitats for humanity.
As for the commitment I shared with Mrs. Carter to combat the ordeal of depression and other threats to mental health, I must say that the more we saw of each other, the warmer and more cordial our relationship became. The last time our paths crossed was at a fund-raiser in Atlanta. In what can only be regarded as an eerie, even morbid coincidence, two of the best friends I’ve ever had—Art Buchwald and William Styron—were stricken with depression around the same time that I was. Their ordeals were just as harrowing as mine, and because Art and Bill and I enjoy a certain celebrity status, we’re sometimes asked to appear together at fund-raising events as a kind of depression team or trio, and that was what the three of us were doing in Atlanta in the spring of 2004. By then we had begun to bill ourselves as “the Blues Brothers.” That, I grant you, is not the most clever pun ever coined, but it did help to attract attention. About eight hundred donors showed up that night to hear us relate our tales
[ 51 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
of woe, and as we walked out on the stage, I spotted Rosalynn Carter sitting in the front row. I still find her attractive, so I waved to her and said, “Hi, good-looking.” She rewarded me with a radiant smile: On that occasion, she was all magnolia.
Ro n a l d a n d N a n c y R e a g a n W H I L E R O S A L Y N N C A R T E R W A S A relatively new friend, the woman who succeeded her as First Lady was a dear old friend. In fact, I’m certain I was the only working journalist who could boast that I had known Nancy Reagan longer than her husband had.
Throughout most of the 1940s, when I was in the early phase of my career in broadcasting, I had lived and worked in Chicago, where I jumped around quite a bit from one radio job to another.
One of my regular assignments was to announce and narrate programs at the CBS station WBBM, and there I was befriended by an actress named Edie Davis, who performed on various network soap operas that originated from WBBM. She was not only talented but versatile; on one show called Betty and Bob, Edie played both the society grande dame and the black maid Gardenia. And though she was old enough to be my mother—I was then twenty-four and she was
But as time passed, I gradually came around to the view that if I talked about my experience in public, it just might help others come to a better and more accurate understanding of depression. Thus, for the past ten years or so, I’ve done just that, on Larry King’s television show and similar interview programs, as well as at other public forums. Though I’ve resisted the various efforts to depict me as a poster boy for depression, I have agreed to speak at occasional fund-raising events, and it was at these fund-raisers that I began running into Rosalynn Carter. As I soon learned, she has been vigorously engaged in programs to eradicate the stigma attached to depression and simi-
[ 50 ]
F I R S T C O U P L E S
lar afflictions ever since her years in the White House, when she served as the honorary chairperson of the president’s Commission on Mental Health.
I should point out that her dedication to helping the less fortunate is a moral imperative she shares with her husband, who is living testament to the belief that presidents can go on to serve their country with impressive distinction even after they’re voted out of office.
In fact, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have been such paragon role models that they may have set the gold standard for conduct and achievements by former first families. Since leaving Washington, the ex-president has been in the forefront of the vigilant effort to assure honest elections in emerging democracies around the globe, and that is only part of his larger commitment to the cause of human rights. In addition, he has brought his own hammer-and-nails labor to the task of building habitats for humanity.
As for the commitment I shared with Mrs. Carter to combat the ordeal of depression and other threats to mental health, I must say that the more we saw of each other, the warmer and more cordial our relationship became. The last time our paths crossed was at a fund-raiser in Atlanta. In what can only be regarded as an eerie, even morbid coincidence, two of the best friends I’ve ever had—Art Buchwald and William Styron—were stricken with depression around the same time that I was. Their ordeals were just as harrowing as mine, and because Art and Bill and I enjoy a certain celebrity status, we’re sometimes asked to appear together at fund-raising events as a kind of depression team or trio, and that was what the three of us were doing in Atlanta in the spring of 2004. By then we had begun to bill ourselves as “the Blues Brothers.” That, I grant you, is not the most clever pun ever coined, but it did help to attract attention. About eight hundred donors showed up that night to hear us relate our tales
[ 51 ]
B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
of woe, and as we walked out on the stage, I spotted Rosalynn Carter sitting in the front row. I still find her attractive, so I waved to her and said, “Hi, good-looking.” She rewarded me with a radiant smile: On that occasion, she was all magnolia.
Ro n a l d a n d N a n c y R e a g a n W H I L E R O S A L Y N N C A R T E R W A S A relatively new friend, the woman who succeeded her as First Lady was a dear old friend. In fact, I’m certain I was the only working journalist who could boast that I had known Nancy Reagan longer than her husband had.
Throughout most of the 1940s, when I was in the early phase of my career in broadcasting, I had lived and worked in Chicago, where I jumped around quite a bit from one radio job to another.
One of my regular assignments was to announce and narrate programs at the CBS station WBBM, and there I was befriended by an actress named Edie Davis, who performed on various network soap operas that originated from WBBM. She was not only talented but versatile; on one show called Betty and Bob, Edie played both the society grande dame and the black maid Gardenia. And though she was old enough to be my mother—I was then twenty-four and she was
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