Maybe the seeds of my journalist career were sown when I was three and saw President and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt launch a ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I had no idea who they were or what a president was, but I was mightily impressed that with one whack of a bottle, Mrs. R pushed that great hulk into the East River.

Had to wait a few more years for another celebrity encounter. This time, President Harry Truman, getting showered with ticker tape after WW2 was won. Very soon after, I saw General Dwight Eisenhower get the similar treatment. By then I had learned more about presidents and generals, but my awareness of celebrities was limited, basically to Ronald Coleman (my namesake) and Bette Davis, Mom’s favorites.

A few years later, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York gave me a medal for doing a Boy Scout good deed, and we shook hands. Ed Sullivan of TV fame was there and gave me a pat on the back.

That did it for close encounters of the celebrity kind until I got to Moravian and started working for the Bethlehem Globe-Times as the night man, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., five nights a week. It was either the newspaper or a better-paying but less-appealing job at Bethlehem Steel sweeping floors. I got to interview Jimmy Durante, a famous comedian back in the day, but when we met, he was an old man who told me great stories of Hollywood’s glory days. I got my first-ever byline, very heady stuff, trust me.

The byline clinched a career choice, and I went on to get a master’s at Northwestern University; the best part, a glowing letter of praise from a professor to a friend at Fortune Magazine. The editor invited me for an interview and asked what I knew about business and economics. Zilch, said I. Maybe I would be happier at Life, said he, and promised to make a call.

I knew a dust off when I saw one and kept on looking for a job. Yet soon after, I was called for an interview at Life, which I felt did not go well. But a week later I was asked to schedule a physical. Don’t recall anyone ever telling me I was hired but that’s the way the place seemed to work. I had to ask about my salary.

For the next five years, I traveled the world and met the famous and infamous. A first assignment in Asia was a profile on Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. At a party in Manila, her brother offered to lend me money to invest in a Luzon gold mine. I declined.

Vietnam drew multitudes of celebrities, and I got to know many. Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather were just reporters like me and nice guys. Eric Sevareid asked my opinion about the war. John le Carré wanted to know about being a war correspondent. Lyndon Johnson did not but we did shake hands. (Lady Bird was nicer and asked me about home.)

I’d met John Kennedy at Moravian in 1960 when I was USG president. We shook hands. When I was transferred to Los Angeles, I covered Robert Kennedy’s primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and then his assassination on the night he won.

Richard Nixon didn’t like reporters and rarely spoke to us. During the Oregon primary, the Nixon bus got a ticket for speeding on the way into Portland. We press folks on our own bus cheered when we passed. We didn’t much like him either.

The week before the California primary was a celebrity fest for me. I lunched with Robert Vaughan, the Man from U.N.C.L.E. guy who was finishing his doctoral thesis at University of Southern California. I talked to Charles Bronson who wore a beret and liked Eugene McCarthy. Casey Stengel had a trophy room in his Pasadena home that would have paid off the national debt. The sports writers had made him out to be a grouchy manipulator who just looked on while the Yankees won all those World Series. That image disappeared the minute he welcomed me in. Warm, funny, thoughtful, a delight. He sure manipulated me.

Warren Beatty threw a tight spiral, but I could throw the football farther. He and Julie Christy were in the midst of a hot dispute when my wife and I arrived at his Malibu home. He loved Bobby Kennedy and wanted to talk about him, leaving my wife to deal with Julie while we tossed the pigskin on the beach. My wife fell in love with him when he fed her ice cream.

Katherine Ross was smart and up for an Oscar when I did a profile. The Graduate won but she didn’t. She appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and said I was doing the story. The camera found my wife and me in the audience.

I interviewed then Governor Ronald Reagan. His huge desk was bare except for a phone and a stack of photos he was autographing with a sharpie.

After Life died in 1972, I went to work for Business Week and met very smart people, few if any you’ve heard of. Also Donald Trump. I got an offer to start a magazine and met and shook hands with President Gerald Ford, soon-to-be-president Jimmy Carter and his vice president, Walter Mondale. Later my wife and I were invited to the White House, but Mrs. Carter apologized; the president was at Camp David with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, talking about peace in the Middle East.

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It’s been a cold winter here, quiet too, a time for looking ahead to spring and back at the past as us older types do. All these people to remember. I do wonder sometimes about that Filipino gold mine and what Imelda did with her shoe collection. A thousand pairs! Kind of funny what your mind conjures up when you let it.

—Ron dePaolo ’64
Penobscot, Maine