When I was growing up, watching the news meant you had one hour early in the evening. One half hour of local news at 6, national news at 6:30, both delivered by a select group of white men in what looked like dark gray suits because color TV wasn’t popular yet, relaying the day’s events with sonorous solemnity. Where were the women? There weren’t any. Well, not exactly. There were a few females on air, though way past puberty, they were called weather girls. No, they were not meteorologists. They were pageboard young ladies in tasteful shifts with perky voices and perpetual smiles who gave you the forecast in three brief minutes before they signed off with cheering non-sequiturs like “have a happy!” and conveying all the gravitas of a stewardess or a car hop on roller skates. I don’t know of a single intelligent woman who wanted to grow up to be one.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that gutsy women like Barbara Walters, Nancy Dickerson, Dorothy Fuldheim, Diane Sawyer (who, by the way, started as a weather girl) and Melba Tolliver fought like infantrymen to carve a respected place in television news. My guess is these are the women that Deborah Roberts wanted to be when she grew up. She’s done a hell of a job staking her claim at ABC news. She has spent the last 30 years both in-studio as a host of 20/20 and in the field covering major events both globally and nationally: the AIDS crisis in Africa, the plight of Rwandan refugees, the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the aftermath of the Gulf War, and captivating interviews with women who matter to her, and should to us, like Rosa Parks, and a feisty woman named Michelle Obama who was reluctantly thrust into the spotlight when her husband tossed his hat into the presidential ring. It all sounds so serious, but Deborah Roberts is charming, warm, dedicated and a role model. She dresses great, and she is one half of a marvelous couple because her husband is the nicest man on morning television, Al Roker.
She’s been doing this a long time, other women in her place might have thought of retirement, and unless she’s holding out on me, Deborah Roberts doesn’t seem to have any interest in stopping, and that’s why I’m so glad to see her here on The Happy Grownup.