From Noah Adams, Host,
All Things Considered
A few years back, there was a cartoon in The New Yorker with one character saying to another, "I love it when you talk in your All Things Considered
voice." It's half-a-laugh funny, but far more interesting if you deconstruct it a bit. Susan Stamberg never has had an All Things Considered voice; of course, our listeners know this inherently. If you talk with her in the hallway at NPR -- or on the phone, or waiting in line for a movie -- you'll hear just the same Susan as you will on the radio. The microphone is opened and Susan smiles and looks directly at the listener and tells the truth. She understood this medium from the beginning -- and no one's ever done it better.
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From Bob Edwards, Host,
Morning Edition
Susan Stamberg's contributions to All Things Considered helped NPR's first regularly-scheduled program win a Peabody Award in its first year. By the second year, NPR had figured out that its most gifted radio performer should be at the microphone every day. And what a sensation she created! Susan reawakened the 50-year-old medium of radio and gave it energy. Listeners and critics were enchanted.
Those of us lucky enough to work closely with her learned valuable lessons about engaging an audience and earning the trust and respect of listeners. Yes, she's smart and witty, but she also knows when to be one, the other, both or neither.
Thirty years into her network career, she's still asking the essential questions and learning new information. Consequently, so are we. It's rare that her contribution to Morning Edition is not the most arresting feature that makes that day's program a success -- the story a listener remembers and shares with others later in the day. I wish we could put her on the most marginal material and have her raise its stature by applying her unique treatment.
Susan used to joke that someday we'd all swap our radio war stories while rocking on the porch of the Shady Radio Rest Home. I see the staff serving her seltzer with a twist while she's actually enjoying a robust burgundy from a bottle concealed under the knitted afghan on her lap. The rest of us are passing a pint of prune juice in a paper bag. She will be telling the most fascinating tales, and telling them better than anyone.
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Jim Lehrer, Executive Editor and Anchor,
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Those of us who talk into microphones for a living have to have role models. Mine has always been Susan. I have tried and tried to talk in a way that was warm, friendly, stern, smart, cool, funny, serious -- all at the same time. But alas, it has not worked. I have now accepted the fact that there is only one Susan Stamberg and that is the way it's always going to be. And what a blessing that is -- she is. Happy 30th, Susan!
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From Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Co-hosts,
Car Talk
We owe our careers at NPR to Susan Stamberg. She is, without a doubt, one of the most courageous women we've ever met. Why? Well, she put us on her show. If you had a weekly program on the country's finest radio network, would you risk it all to chat with a couple of no-good knuckleheads who think the Dodge Dynasty was an era in Chinese history? And look where her kindness has gotten her. She used to have a weekly show. Now they only send her out to cover tiara contests.
In truth, we stand in awe of Susan. She has a way of coming out of the radio and grabbing you whenever she's on the air. And we wish she'd stop it! No, really ... we hope she never stops it. She is NPR to a lot of people, and rightfully so. Happy 30th anniversary, Susan. And we hope you got our gift check. Edwards said to make it out to "cash" and he'd be sure you got it.
Love and kisses, Tom and Ray
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From E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., past President,
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Susan, you are an icon, a gem, a winner; a clear and clarion voice, a wonderful writer and a battler for writers in your magnificent work with PEN/Faulkner; a sensitive and empathetic soul, and a friend. Not in that order. Noreen and I love you dearly. Congratulations for all those wonderful years.
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From Cokie Roberts,
Senior News Analyst
Susan Stamberg is one of the world's great interviewers. She brings things out of people that they don't even know they know. It's fascinating to listen. I remember in the old days when we used to have this odd version of a call-in program during big news events. We would call out to people who had previously called in and given their names and numbers. There Susan would be, talking to someone cold, and learning the most interesting things from them.
Susan's also managed to keep finding ways to grow in the medium. It's a challenge that few succeed in achieving, but she has. Anyone listening to her recent work, like her presidential transition pieces and her series on loyalty, can tell you what a pleasure it is to hear from such a smart grown-up. (No, Susan, I didn't say old -- you just heard it that way.)
When I first came to work at NPR in the fall of 1977, my oldest child was nine. After nine years as a working mother, Susan was the first other mother I had ever encountered on the job. What a relief! Someone to share the stories! And, always, to share the giggles.
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From Mr Rogers, Host
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
Susan's famous book is entitled Talk. Of course, the reason people from every walk of life love to talk with her is that she knows how to listen.
Susan has been a great help in our work with families through our television specials. She's always welcome in this Neighborhood -- always.
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From Robert Siegel, Host,
All Things Considered
To say that Susan Stamberg "anchored" All Things Considered for the first half of its life is an understatement. She animated the program, personified it, pushed it beyond conventional boundaries. In short, she defined it. She was like no other network anchor: female, conversational, disarming, equally at home inquiring about Gershwin or Gandhi.
In her day, the reporting staff was a fraction of its current size; the foreign staff was a gleam in the eye of only the most ambitious public radio people. So, the hosts carried the show in a way that's hard to imagine today. It is equally hard to appreciate how revolutionary the sound of Susan Stamberg was in the broadcast environment of the 1970s, with its insistence on stylized, authoritative male voices and its firewall between hard news and soft features. Susan broke down those barriers and has been so widely imitated that one can miss the point that she was, and remains, an original.
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From Scott Simon, Host,
Weekend Edition Saturday
I hope I don't diminish Susan Stamberg's reputation by saying that it was her example that brought me to NPR. I listened to a baby being born one night on All Things Considered (it must have been in 1975), heard Susan's gentle, skilled, and insistent voice, and decided, "I'd like to try to do something like that." Susan's breakthrough is often listed as being the first woman to co-anchor a regular evening news broadcast. But I think her contribution has been more notable yet. Susan Stamberg is the first real human being to host a regular evening news broadcast, a person who laughs and cries and discovers things along with us in our homes and cars.
I do have a couple of Susan anecdotes from a few brief weeks in which I substituted for Noah Adams and hosted ATC with her in the 1980s. Once, we were doing some kind of allegedly funny story in which the payoff was supposed to be a high, ringing peal of Stambergian laughter. And so it was. Except, as a sour-faced engineer informed us, there was a technical problem. No recording. I blanched, paled, and began to panic. But Susan said smoothly, "No sweat. Let's do it again. I can do the laugh again." And so she did. It had the majesty of Michael Jordan turning to a cameraman after a slam-dunk and saying, "What, you weren't rolling? No sweat. I can do the jam again."
On another occasion, we sat in the studio during a taped piece. It's true, as the legend has it: Mrs. Stamberg knits as she broadcasts. The clack of the needles chattered on. Susan at one point picked up her tape measure and pulled it straight-faced around her head. "See?" she said as she looped it around to observe her hat size. "It's not too big."
My admiration for Susan is so vast that I even tried her damn cranberry relish recipe once. The truth is, it's not half-bad. But I'll never say that to her face.
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From Wendy Wasserstein,
Award-Winning Playwright
Susan Stamberg is the voice of reason in this country. When the next ice age arrives, Susan Stamberg will explain it to us and we'll all feel warm again. Furthermore, she will always make certain that poets, writers and artists are taken as seriously as Internet entrepreneurs and presidents.
She is fair-minded, decent and unbelievably intelligent. But I know something that is most outstanding about Susan Stamberg. She has her Actors' Equity card. Susan, all things considered, we're all waiting for your Hedda Gabler!
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From Linda Wertheimer, Host,
All Things Considered
Susan Stamberg and I go back. Way back. We shared an office (sur le Xerox) in NPR's first incarnation on I Street. I directed ATC in those early days and I was watching from the control room when Susan reinvented news on the radio. In those days, we were never quite sure that we had an entire program when we began each evening. I remember Susan was always prepared to fill time with her interpretive dance "Spring" if necessary.
I've also always loved her approach to politics. When a little known governor came out of Georgia to run for president, Susan thought we needed to know more about him. She was especially interested in his smile and by extension, the teeth that were on display. She called his dentist and asked if Governor Carter's teeth were real. "All his own," said the dentist. She mentioned jokes about the governor's teeth, and asked if he was a good patient who kept his appointments. "He's on time and comes three times a year." "Is that what you advise all Americans to do?" "Oh, I think twice is enough." A year or so into Jimmy Carter's presidency, I often thought that we'd learned something significant about him that day.
Susan Stamberg set a standard for us all, and the best thing about it is that nothing is standard. Everything and everyone has interested her at some point. And we have always been interested to hear why.
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