Up Front | From the Editor

September 2000: Vol. 79, No. 4

hen I was just a freelancer for GM, I did a cover story on the Peabody Award archives, which are part of the UGA Libraries' Special Collections. A TV junkie from birth, I leaped at the chance to look back at an original American art and communications form that first invaded our living rooms and our collective consciousness when I was just a toddler.

Doing the Peabody story reconnected me to the early days of both television and my life. Our first TV set was a Stromberg-Carlson. It had rabbit ears, big rotary dials, and no remote control to misplace. Our family bought TV trays like the rest of the country, and planned our evenings around Ed Sullivan and "I Love Lucy."

(L-R) Dean Drewry with Peabody winners Eric Sevareid and Ed Sullivan.

I remember feeling grown up because I got to stay up and watch my parents' favorite programs: "The Tonight Show" with Jack Paar, who walked off the set one night because a censor wouldn't let him tell a joke about a "water closet," and "The Jackie Gleason Show," whose ensemble of oddball characters produced an hilarious show about nothing long before "Seinfeld."

I was too young to appreciate what was going on in Korea. Before the Peabody assignment, most of what I knew about the war was gleaned from watching episodes of "M*A*S*H." But that's one of the beauties of UGA's Peabody collection: an elevator ride to the seventh floor of the Main Library can send you hurtling back in time—with television as your time machine.

Let's say you're watching a tape of the "M*A*S*H" episode where Hawkeye Pierce is bending over a wounded soldier named Berman. "You got a rabbi?" says the injured man. "No, but we've got a priest who loves Al Jolson!" says Hawkeye, trying to distract his patient from the pain. You hit the eject button and ask the attendant for real Korea footage. You push "play" and the year is suddenly 1952. The show is Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now: Christmas in Korea." Helicopters full of wounded men have just landed on a hospital ship in choppy seas. A newsman asks a soldier injured in a mortar explosion what he thinks of the war. The microphone can barely pick up his whispered answer: "I wish it was over a long time ago."

In this issue, GM readers will find a new story that traces the history and quality of all three of the UGA Libraries' Special Collections, which include the Hargrett Library and the Richard B. Russell Library. The strength of these collections, as with the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards, is that they really do bring history alive. Some of you readers may still associate university libraries with term papers, final exams, and the loneliness of the stacks. Forget about it. School is over for most of us, but libraries are a doorway to lifelong learning. Go and enjoy! I did.