I came across this photo today and would like to share some behind the scenes scoop with you. I know people have said a lot of less than nice things about Brian Williams – people who have never even met him. I was not personally there when things went awry for him at NBC so I will not speak to that or judge him for what happened.
I did however work with Brian for about two years when I worked at NBC in New York in my first full-time professional job in television in my twenties. I would go to morning meetings in Tom Brokaw’s office with Brian and about 15 other correspondents and producers. I had an office next door to Brian when he was starting to fill in for Brokaw.
I would like to say for the record that my experience of Brian was that he was a really good, humble guy with a great sense of humor and a desire to make a difference. He used to be a firefighter and mentored me a lot to help me and my career.
He would send me funny instant messages during commercial breaks when he was anchoring Nightly News. We used to go out to lunch and he’d give me his two cents on the news industry.
On the day when we took this selfie about 25 years ago, he showed me his firefighter hat in his office and we had some laughs about the news business. He worked like a dog and inspired me with his dedication.
One day he saw me at the elevator leaving around 5pm and jokingly said to me, “Half day?” We put in such long hours. Producers would sometimes sleep under their desks overnight to finish work. One of the correspondents got a futon couch in her office so she could get some rest between finishing up work.
When I ran into some challenges at work, he continued to be kind and was a reference for me for when I went on and got my first TV reporting job at KPLR-11 in St. Louis. He helped build me up through challenges and I am grateful.
One day we had lunch in downtown Manhattan and he said to me, “Sonja, they don’t take me seriously, because I don’t have a college degree. They’ll take you seriously.”
So I hope you’ll take me seriously when I say it was an honor to work with Brian. He helped me a lot and I am grateful I got the opportunity to work with him. He was always very kind and generous with me and my family when they visited NYC their first times. So thank you, Brian.
Yes, he is a fallible human. He didn’t do everything perfectly and made mistakes. So what? Is there a person on this planet who has never made a mistake and not screwed up something bigtime? I think we all need to be accountable for our actions and there’s something in the Bible about casting stones. 😉
From my experience and in my humble opinion, life is not about doing things perfectly or without making mistakes. It’s about learning from them, doing what you can to make things right and getting back up stronger, wiser and more resilient. And that’s my two cents.
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