Bruce Morton died yesterday. He was a sensitive and deeply moral man. He never raised his voice and when I asked him why he told me that he had seen so much violence when he covered the Vietnam War that he didn’t want to be responsible for inflicting any more – even verbally. Those years had left a deep mark on him, but that reply was about as far as he would go in discussing it out loud.
He was smart too, and funny, and brilliant. He won an Emmy for his coverage of the 1970 trial of Lt. William Calley for the 1968 My Lai Massacre. It was tough for someone who had been so affected by the war to cover this tale of atrocities and shame, but he did it elegantly and well, as he did everything.
I learned so much from him; some of it really unexpected. Once at a party in the studio for the guests who had appeared on a just-completed live broadcast, we got into a terrible fight about Lyndon Johnson. I was part of the anti-war movement before I went into journalism and was only 23, as you can see in the photo of the two of us ( along with hundreds of thousands of marchers.) I hated Johnson, blamed him for the war, of course, and had very little perspective on the rest of his history.
With the kind of passion I learned to expect from him but that was really scary then, Bruce ran the litany of Johnson’s Poverty Program, Civil Rights accomplishments and background and insisted that I take another look. He was, of course, right. Like every other story, this one had two sides and I had only seen one. That never happened to Bruce.
He was really nice to me; he and his wife Maggie even hired me, since I was usually short of cash, to babysit for their two fabulous kids Sarah and Alec. And their Great Dane. And their cats. It was a real privilege to be invited into their very exciting lives and be trusted with their kids. All those times are memories I cherish.
As I remember this lovely and remarkably talented man, (I once saw him ad lib a 1:30 live radio report and get it right, beautiful and to the second) I can’t do much better than our colleague Joe Peyronnin:
Bruce Morton was a brilliant political journalist, and a superb writer and reporter. He wrote a script faster than anyone I have ever known. His writing was imaginative, incisive and informative. We worked together at CBS News on many stories in the 70’s and 80’s, and got the scoop of the1984 Democrat Convention, that Walter Mondale had picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. Bruce was a truly remarkable man. RIP my friend.