Holliman was about to enjoy one of the highlights of his career--serving as co-anchor with Cronkite for the telecast of John Glenn's Space Shuttle flight.
A sad farewell to one of the "Baghdad Boys"
CNN's John Holliman (ABJ '70) dies in a tragic auto accident
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Holliman was about to enjoy one of the highlights of his career--serving as co-anchor with Cronkite for the telecast of John Glenn's Space Shuttle flight. |
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom Johnson is president of CNN. This column is an excerpt from his eulogy at John Holliman's funeral.)
t isn't easy delivering eulogies, even under the best of conditions. It is especially difficult today. John's sudden death has shaken us, shaken us to the core. It has affected all of us profoundly--most of all his immediate family. Little Jay lost his daddy, who idolized him. Dianne lost her husband, not in Iraq or on a space mission, but on an errand to the grocery store to buy syrup for breakfast pancakes.
But to John, we were all "family," especially the CNN staff and those of you representing NASA and the space community. He treated each and every one of us as a loved one. My dilemma was that John was much more to me than a splendid CNN colleague. He was a best friend.
We both came out of small Georgia towns, John from Thomaston and I from nearby Macon. Both of us attended the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. Incidentally, for all of you from Athens, he kept a photograph of the legendary Dean John Drewry framed in his CNN office. We were not Ivy League, East Coast media elite types. The Georgia red clay was still between our toes.
John wanted to do everything. And I mean everything. Cover politics, cover breaking news, cover Iraq, do hurricanes, fires, floods, do radio. He wanted to be a national correspondent and a space correspondent. He wanted to be the first American journalist in space. He lobbied NASA. He lobbied the Russians. He lobbied me. He wanted to go up on the shuttle and report live, play-by-play on MIR space station.
He wanted it so badly that he learned to
After repeated urging, I approved John and Ed Turner going to Moscow to persuade the Russians to send John up to MIR--maybe with a one-way ticket. After much high-level discussion and considerable vodka (I'm told), the Russians agreed, provided CNN would pay the bill--only $15 million, plus about $600,000 in training costs. John thought it was a bargain. Well, we offered $1 million--a lot of promotion and publicity to the Russians. In the end, that was not enough. They sent one of Boris Yeltsin's former aides up instead.
Just before he left for the heavens last week, John Holliman was a very happy man. He was high as a kite about his upcoming role as co-anchor with Walter Cronkite of John Glenn's return to space. Walter asked me to read a part of a note he sent Dianne yesterday.
"He dazzled me with his knowledge of the space program and his infectious enthusiasm for the difficult coverage task ahead. I realized over those weeks what a formidable talent this was--and much more. In a business not particularly known for graciousness and unselfishness between colleagues sharing an assignment, I found myself constantly fighting off John's magnanimity in trying to give me the best lines."
Can you imagine what that meant to a small town boy from Thomaston to have the world's most respected anchorman anointing him as lead anchor? John was walking on air for the rest of the week.
And how could we not love John? His enthusiasm was contagious. Even the Iraqis loved him and asked me to send John back. They even sent a message of condolence yesterday from Baghdad--along with hundreds of others. John's smile, his humor, and his warmth just enveloped all of us.
Yes, he was too plump and too
You left us too suddenly, John. But when John Glenn soars once again into the heavens, we know you'll be watching with that boyish awe of yours--shouting, "Holy Cow. What a sight."
Looks good enough to
Thanks to food stylist Kathy Prescott, burgers are juicy and fries are fresh--at least on TV
By Laura Wexler
t's makeup for food," says Kathy Prescott, when folks ask her what she does for a living.
Prompt her further, and Prescott spins war stories ala "McGyver"--like the time she stuck floral wire up the backs of a few spineless shrimps for a Red Lobster commercial. Stand tall, fellas. When those pesky shrimps' tails threatened to turn black, no worries. Prescott made them look "natural" with model airplane paint.
Another time she needed a perfect Wendy's hamburger bun, so she whipped out tweezers and glue, and redistributed a few sesame seeds. (If you're glueless, hairspray, honey, and vaseline work too.)
"We make food look good," says Prescott (BFA '75, MFA '80), who's worked as a freelance food stylist in Miami for 10 years. "It doesn't have to taste good."
Unless, that is, the commercial involves the trademark "bite and smile"--wherein the actor munches a huge taste of the burger/turkey sandwich/candy bar and becomes a changed man/woman.
Prescott--the daughter of M. Smith Griffith, a 25-year volunteer and donor at the Georgia Museum of Art, and the step-daughter of retired University Relations dean Louis Griffith--is a trained painter and French chef. Though she had no idea what food styling was until she began as an apprentice, now it seems the perfect combination of her two arts: 50 percent cooking and 50 percent arranging. And 100 percent crazy detail work.
"I cooked 40 lobsters one day to get one perfect one," says Prescott. "Out of 40 sets of feelers, I picked the two best and then glued them onto the best lobster."
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It's all about making food look good, not taste good, says food stylist Kathy Prescott (BFA '75, MFA '80) |
That's nothing compared to the day Prescott roasted 38 turkeys for a Butterball commercial. "That was christening by roasting," she says.
As a freelance stylist, Prescott fields calls from companies like Burger King, Pizza Hut, Quaker Oats, and Milky Way. Often they call Prescott with the "What" for a commercial, and leave it to her to devise the "How."
Once she made miniature Baby Ruths from scratch and then pasted nuts and nougat onto an arm-sized plaster Baby Ruth bar so chocolate could "flow" over it during a commercial. "My favorite jobs are the real creative ones--where the food is more like a sculpture," she says. "There's no textbook for food stylists. Every job is different."
Through the years, though, Prescott has picked up some tricks of the trade. A hairpin is perfect for mooring lettuce to a sandwich. A clothes steamer is fine for melting cheese. Maraschino cherry juice turns a ham rosy.
And if you touch pretty much any kind of food with oil, it will shine like a star--star of its own commercial, that is.