Remembering Peter: “In His Voice Was All Of Our Fear & Hope & Anxiety & Faith”

An excerpt from last night’s special, “Peter Jennings: Reporter:”

“Finally this evening, a brief note about change. Some of you have noticed in the last several days that I was not covering the Pope.”

Charles Gibson: “I didn’t watch it. I didn’t want to watch it. I didn’t want to hear what I knew was in Peter’s voice.”

“As some of you now know, I have learned in the last couple of days that I have lung cancer.”

Diane Sawyer: “To be enduring something like this seemed simply incomprehensible.”

“Yes, I was a smoker until about 20 years ago, and I was weak, and I smoked over 9/11.”

Dr. Timothy Johnson: “Even though I knew about his smoking history, was surprised when he made it public in his announcement.”

“But whatever the reason, the news does slow you down a bit.”

Barbara Walters: “It was so typical of him to announce that, that he had lung cancer, to say it himself, to not gloss it over.”

“But almost 10 million Americans are already living with cancer, and I have a lot to learn from them. And living is the key word.”

Tom Brokaw: “Emphasis on the word ‘living.’ He could deliver his lines with such elan, and he did that night.”

Dan Rather: “Guts. It took a lot of guts.”

Gibson: “I didn’t want to see somebody that I thought was an absolutely immovable and invulnerable force acknowledging that indeed he was vulnerable.”

“I will continue to do the broadcast on good days. My voice will not always be like this.”

Sawyer: “Yet in his voice was all of our fear and hope and anxiety and faith.”