It was 1979. I had the day off. The phone
rang.
I can still hear my girlfriend
at the other end of the line. "Eddie's dead! He
died!"
There are some words
you never forget.
I called the newsroom at KDKA-TV and was told Eddie Romano had been
out on assignment,
shooting gasoline tanker trucks driven by management personnel rolling
out of a strike-bound terminal.
He was standing on the sidewalk at a corner. An 18 wheeler, the
5th of 6 trucks to roll out,
cut the corner too close, jumped the curb and rolled over Eddie
Romano.
He wasn't carrying his
film camera. He was carrying one of the "new" ENG rigs, which
loaded
him down with a camera
on one shoulder and a tape deck slung over the other. I felt
as though I should go in to work but
there was no point to it. They told me they had it
covered.
There was nothing for me to do.
It was over.
My friend Eddie Romano was 61 when he died. He survived the
depression and then served
as an officer in the OSS in World War II. His decorations
included
a purple heart. He never talked
about his time in the service but the fact that the OSS was the
forerunner
of the CIA was enough
to indicate that whatever he did it was probably pretty heavy
duty.
But then, Eddie Romano was a
pretty heavy duty guy. He insisted that his last name be
pronounced
"Rho-man-oh" as opposed to
the common pronunciation of "Rho-mahn-oh." I eventually learned
from a colleague that he parachuted
in behind enemy lines and spent the days hiding in a tunnel.
He came out only at night to shoot
infrared pictures. All the time living in darkness
did a number on his eyes, forcing him to wear
tinted glasses to the day he died. He got into the news business
in the mid 40s, when he went to work
for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, a Hearst paper. He stayed there
until the paper went under in 1960,
when he moved over to KDKA-TV.
Eddie Romano almost always had a smile on his face and a comment
designed
to pick you up.
You knew exactly where you stood with the guy. If he didn't like
you he told you so to your face.
If he liked you--well, Eddie stood up for his friends and never shied
away from a fight.
"#---# him and the mule he rode in on!" is a phrase I'll never
forget. It was, of course, reserved
for folks Eddie was not fond of. As shooters sometimes
do, Eddie would complain about the
inexperience of reporters but he was always willing to share his
experience
with a rookie.
One minute he'd be barking at you and the next he'd be telling you
how to do it right.
He'd help people, if they'd let him.
One memory that sticks is the day we got lost--just plain
lost--somewhere up
in west-central Pennsylvania.
We were
doing a story about a man who died in a river, but our directions
were all wrong (the assignment desk
had given them to us) and we kept driving east, and then turning around
a driving back the way we
had come. There was a road crew working on the highway.
We were in a car emblazoned
with "KDKA, Channel 2" on the hood and doors in large
letters.
The third or fourth time we did an
about-face and passed the road-crew going in the opposite direction,
the workers began to looked puzzled.
The 5th or 6th time we passed them, they stopped working and watched
us roll by. Eddie and I both started
laughing and couldn't stop. We were a two-man "wrong way
gang."
We were going to be late, but we both
knew that somehow we'd get the story done. #@!!#!
it Ronnie-O, don't worry about it,
##@@!!**%! ying-yangs, we'll get there," he said. And,
we did. We eventually found the
river, got in a boat, did the story and got it back in time to get
the film in the soup and get it on
the air. It was a good story and Eddie did an outstnading job of
shooting it. He always did.
He was proud of his work.
Eddie was one of the "giants" Tom Brokaw writes about in his
book.
He was described as "ruddy faced and
silver haired" and that pretty much hits it. His obit in the
Pittsburgh Press called him "The classic old fashioned
newsman." A guy who combined "sudden outbursts of temper with
sudden displays of affection."
When these people are gone, they're gone forever. They have a
depth of experience that gives them a
perspective most of us simply do not have. We need to appreciate
them while they are still around and listen
to what they have to say. In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea
to seek out their advice. Many of them have
"been there and done that." Many of them, like Eddie Romano,
have done far more than any of us might
imagine.
By the way, along with everything else he taught me, I took
Eddie's
advice on something that
resulted in a big change in my life. The woman who was my
girlfriend
in Pittsburgh is now my wife.
"Marry the girl, Ronnie-O!" Eddie told me. And I did.
web posted 6/10/00
workingreporter.com