YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Rather

lines on the record
63
first
2020-12-10
most recent
2020-12-10
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Well, it was a huge thing for my mother. I'm the eldest of three. I have a younger brother and a younger sister. And among other things, my mother realized that in my time, a college education was going to be particularly valuable. And also, and she would say so, she would say to me, you know, Dan, if I can just get you in college and get you through college, then that will encourage your brother and sister and make it easier for them to go. My father, frankly, he didn't quite understand, he didn't understand what college or university was really. He wasn't opposed to my going, but he wasn't absolutely sure that it was imperative that I go. acceding to my mother wished for me to go, his view was that I should try to be an engineer. Because for him, this is what we would call institute boys, which is to say university people.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That's true. But looking back on it, it was probably among the most formative things of my early life, maybe the single most formative thing, because at that early age, you have to, you've got a lot of time to think, maybe too much time to think. But one of the things that you thought of all the time was if I ever get up from this bed, boy, I'm going to make every minute count. I'm really going to waste any time. But it was a formative time in my life, the time I was bedridden with rheumatic fever, no question about it.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Listen to it constantly. Houston was not yet a major league team. We were a farm club of the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Cardinals were our Major League team. So we would pick up powerful radio stations like KMX and St. Louis with Pay-Blayer, the Cardinal Games.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Well, the short answer to that is yes. It was a very difficult period. I was not able to attend school. I was alone a lot. But the point is being alone, the radio was my constant companion. And two things in the radio just mesmerized me. One was the news because my having rheumatic fever corresponded roughly with the beginning of World War II for the United States, the attack on Pearl Harbor. I heard all the famous broadcasters, Ed Murrow, Charles Collingwood, Eric Severad reporting from far away places with strange-sounding names. And for me, bedridden as I was, living this great life of purpose and mission and adventure. The other thing was play-by-play radio baseball.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And so I was in bed for almost one full year at one stretch and then another time for the better part of a year that there was no known cure and the doctor, what the fear was it starts in your lower extremities and your feet, in your ankles, and works it way up. And the fear was it gets to your heart and it gives you heart trouble for the rest of your life and can be fatal. So what the doctor said is put him to bed, let him move as little as possible and we might be able to avoid heart trouble.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, that is true, that I contacted rheumatic fever. It was a long time being diagnosed as that. And so beginning when I was about... 10 and three quarters eleven years old until I was almost 14. I spent long periods confined to bed. At the time there was no known cure for rheumatic fever. It was every mother's nightmare second only to polio as a great fear”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Houston Public Library of Montcalm, and my father and his younger brother, Michael John, and my mother, they rated and they discussed it. This was in a period of 1937, 38, 39 through there.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Oh no, absolutely, and they were, my father particularly held perhaps unfairly, but nonetheless he held Herbert Hoover responsible for not responding to the economic depression. And both my parents were big for FDR because they perceived that FDR was number one for the working person. And number two that perhaps he could save the country, which I would submit that indeed he did. But they discussed politics. It wasn't just they perused the newspapers. He read the editorials and they talked among themselves. And when Hitler began to raise, I have an early memory that they heard about Montkamp, the Hitler book, Montkamp, and it was getting into translation. And they actually got a copy from the library from me.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “But I can say for what are the reason that my earliest memories are of wanting to be a reporter. The word journalist was not in the A journalist was a reporter with a cane. But I always said I wanted to be a reporter when we played those kids games. What are you going to be when you grow up? Somebody wanted to be an airplane pilot. Somebody wanted to be an army general or something. I always said I want to be a reporter. Before I really knew what a reporter was, I wanted to be one.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And I went to Houston Public Schools all the way through and then wound up going to college at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, which is deep in East Texas. That my parents, neither of my parents had finished high school. This sounds unusual now, but in their time and place. In fact, in many places in America during the early mid-1930s, this was not unusual, that neither of them had finished high school, but they were a voracious newspaper readers. They took the newspapers, they read the newspapers, they discussed the newspapers. And I think what happened, David, is that somewhere along the way in my early four, five, six years old, I began to think newspapers must be important because my parents spend so much time with them.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I grew up in a neighborhood called the Houston Heights, which when we lived there was what the sociologists now would call a transition neighborhood, which is to say it was this tough neighborhood in which very few people had meaningful work. My father was one of the few people for miles around that actually had a job. But both my parents worked, my father worked with his back in his hands for most of his life. He became an electrician a little later on with home study. But fortunately for me, although it was by anybody's measurement at the neighborhood was the Houston Heights, was at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, that old cliche applies that, you know, we never thought we were poor because we had more than most of the people around us.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Well, I was born in Wharton, Texas, which is not so much in East Texas as on the Texas coast about fifty miles below Houston. And it was an accident of birth. My father was a pipeliner, which is to say he dug ditches for the laying of oil and gas pipelines. He worked with his back in his hands. And they were laying a pipeline from the South Texas oil fields to Houston in New Orleans, and he was digging the ditches. And they would dig the ditches for a while from one town and then another. So they worked their way from Victoria to El Campo to Edna and then finded Horton. So it was born in Wharton. I have no early memories of Wharton because the pipeline moved on and we eventually went up as a year and a half old moved to the outskirts of Houston. Houston was not nearly the big city it is today. It was a big town but not yet a big city. So I grew up basically on the edges of Houston.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Thank you very much, David, and it's good to see you, good to be with you, and I really appreciate this opportunity to visit with you. Thank you.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source