My 65 years in journalism - 42 of them with the AP; It all began in junior high school

Former NPC President Myron Belkind gave a presentation about his life in journalism at the Watergate South Speakers Series on Sept. 18.

Here is the edited text of his remarks:

I want to begin by taking you back to 65 years ago this month, when I heard an announcement on the public-address system at a new junior high school on the east side of Cleveland.

I was 11 years old, and the announcement said: 'Anyone who wants to work on the new junior high school newspaper, please stay after school' - and that is what I did ... and continued to do throughout my career, often coming home late due to breaking news.

My formative years in journalism were spent in Cleveland, from editing the Short Circuit newspaper at Memorial Junior High to then covering sports at Brush High School for two competing weekly suburban papers, and for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Press, while also being the school correspondent for the Cleveland News. Yes, there were three daily newspapers in Cleveland, which was typical of most American cities in those days in the 1950s, and now there is only one, the Plain Dealer, and that is, sadly, also typical of the newspaper landscape in American cities today -- only one newspaper, and some that do not even have home delivery every day, as is the case in Cleveland.

I then decided to go to Ohio State University because I thought it would be best to study journalism in the state capital. And "no," I did not have a football scholarship.

I am especially proud of two public-service campaigns that I helped highlight while at Ohio State working on the Lantern, the daily college newspaper: ending discrimination on university housing lists that then specified racial preferences for private off-campus rooming houses and ending mandatory ROTC, which the board of trustees adopted as a result of our campaign in my final month at Ohio State.

Thirty years later, I had the opportunity at a dinner in London to meet Roswell Gilpatrick, who was deputy secretary of defense in the Kennedy administration when I was editor of the Lantern. I introduced myself as the person who had been responsible for the campaign for voluntary ROTC. I didn't know what his reaction would be. To my pleasant surprise, he said the Defense Department was pleased we had done so, because it enabled the government to concentrate its resources on students who wanted to become officers rather than those who did not, a point I had made in my editorials.

From Ohio State, I headed to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism to get a master's degree that my Ohio State mentor wanted me to have so that I could return to the university and teach one day. Columbia changed my life, thanks to a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship I received on graduation that propelled me to a four-decade career with the Associated Press as a foreign correspondent rather than returning to Ohio.

My first experience abroad was in 1963, while on the Pulitzer Fellowship, doing assignments throughout Southeast Asia for the AP based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, traveling from Burma to work for the release of the local AP correspondent to Indonesia to help cover the era of President Sukarno and then to the Island of Borneo, where I covered a U.N. team that had been sent there to study whether the descendants of the legendary Wild Men of Borneo wanted to join the new proposed nation of Malaysia or Indonesia.

I interviewed the chief Dayak, or tribal leader, and he gave me the basis for one of my favorite leads: "A U.N. team flew today to remote northern Sarawak to ascertain if the descendants of the legendary Wild Men of Borneo wanted to join Malaysia or Indonesia. The chief Dayak, his pierced ear lobes drooping toward his shoulders, replied: 'We want the British to stay.'"

After that year in South East Asia, I returned to New York to rejoin the AP, with the hope I would be sent back overseas as a full-fledged foreign correspondent. But first came a sojourn in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1965, from Fort Jackson, South Carolina, to Kansas City, Missouri, to Saigon while on a military leave of absence from AP. Draftees were not being sent to Vietnam those days, but I was so bored in Kansas City working in the Army Home Town News Center that I volunteered for Vietnam. The Army accommodated me by sending me to Saigon to become an information specialist as a private first class at the headquarters of Gen. William Westmoreland, writing daily communiqués on the military action that the press could quote. And then after rejoining the AP, I finally got my wish to be a staff foreign correspondent in November 1966, when I was sent to New Delhi.

Today, foreign correspondents report from most countries around the world "live"--instantaneously, directly from the scene of a story via live television or online reporting via satellite or the Internet. In November 1966, I filed my stories a little differently, by typing my dispatches on a telegraph form, then having our office messenger take them by bicycle to the local post office and from there -- after the dispatches were counted and recounted word by word since that is how telegraph offices charged for transmission -- they would reach London several hours later. Similarly, photos had to be developed in a local darkroom, then printed and then taken to the post office for transmission. Now, they are transmitted immediately digitally.

I often call myself a lucky kid from Cleveland, and one of the reasons was to have been assigned to India for a decade, and to travel and report throughout South Asia, interviewing the region's leaders including Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Pakistani opposition leader and later President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bangladesh independence leader and later Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the king of Bhutan, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, and the ruler of Sikkim and his American-born wife, Hope Cooke.

It was a decade of major breaking stories, including the India-Pakistan war in 1971 that led to the birth of Bangladesh, India's first nuclear explosion, which the government stressed was a PNE, a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion, in 1974, severe famines, the campaign to eradicate smallpox and finally-covering Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's State of Emergency from 1975 to 1977.

The emergency began during the early hours of June 26, 1975, when the government suspended civil liberties, arrested thousands of political opponents and imposed severe restrictions on the Indian and foreign press. I am often asked, what was the most challenging assignment I had during my career, and it was covering -and surviving -- the State of Emergency without compromising my mission - and the AP's -- to report the news accurately and objectively. Overnight, India had transformed from being the world's biggest democracy and free press, to the largest authoritarian state and a most restrictive press.

At the time, I was president of the Foreign Correspondents' Association of South Asia, and after several Western foreign correspondents were expelled in the first days of the Emergency, I decided to lead a delegation of my colleagues to the residence of Information Minister V.C. Shukla early in the morning to argue for a lifting of censorship. A servant went in to tell the minister we were waiting outside, and he came out a few minutes later to say Mr. Shukla would see us as soon as he finished his morning bath. We did succeed in ending pre-censorship, but we had to agree to abide by several pages of guidelines, of which I felt the most important, overriding guideline was to ensure our reports were accurate.

As the AP bureau chief, I was called in by the censors regularly, often for a conversation over a cup of chai, or tea, with the chief censor, Harry D'Penha, who had been a friend for many years when he was the chief public relations officer for the Indian government. D'Penha summoned me on one occasion to say the government was especially concerned about stories emanating from the AP New Delhi bureau because our dispatches were transmitted to media around the world including to neighboring Pakistan. He said that the government was worried that if I sent a story based on false rumors about communal troubles between Hindus and Muslims that our stories could inflame tensions along the India-Pakistan border and could lead to open warfare.

I replied: "Harry, if I report a story based on false rumors, the Indian government will expel me, but the AP will fire me."

I don't recall being called into the censor after that meeting, and the AP bureau continued to report the news fairly and accurately through the rest of the Emergency, which ended in March 1977 with Mrs. Gandhi's defeat in a general election. To her credit, those elections were free and fair.

India also has many other special memories for me about some lighter stories I covered, including reporting on a child guru from the Divine Light Mission who flew in from America with his disciples on about a half dozen jumbo jets, of reporting on a yoga convention that ended in a brawl between some yogis, and -- would you believe it? -- even cricket. I was the only American journalist in India who covered cricket, mastering phrases like bowled out, hit a century and leg before wicket.

And there were more serious stories including covering the campaign to end the eradication of smallpox, and I mention this because just a few weeks ago, Dr. D.A. Henderson, who led the worldwide campaign to end smallpox under the auspices of the World Health Organization, died, and it brought back memories of my trip to eastern Bihar in the mid-1970s to watch how the WHO conducted its successful campaign by having a team of epidemiologists literally surround a village and then go in and search to find anyone who had not been vaccinated against smallpox and then to vaccinate them. This process was repeated over and over until there were no more smallpox cases reported from India and other countries. The WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1980, thanks in large part to Dr. Henderson. My great regret is that Henderson and the WHO did not receive a Nobel prize for their efforts.

And how can I ever forget going to Nagaland on the remote Indo-Burmese border with the Rev. Billy Graham in November 1972 to cover his crusades marking the centenary of the arrival of the first Baptist missionaries? I was the only American journalist with him. For five days I was literally at his side, starting with breakfast each morning when he would tell me what lesson he planned to use as the basis for his sermon each evening.

I still remember the leads of my dispatches that week. The first night I reported:

"The Rev. Billy Graham told the story of Jonah and the Whale tonight to 50,000 Naga tribal members and won fresh converts to Christ at the start of a series of crusades marking the centenary of the arrival of the first Baptist missionaries in the remote region on the Indo-Burmese border."

And for my final lead, I wrote:

"The Rev. Billy Graham celebrated Thanksgiving today with a cold turkey box lunch aboard a Russian-built Indian Air Force helicopter that flew him out of Nagaland a day after guerrillas ambushed an Indian army patrol near the site of his final crusade celebrating the centenary of the arrival of the first Baptist missionaries in the region."

Covering Graham's visit to Nagaland was also memorable, because of a new title I was given. After Graham concluded his final sermon, the head of the local Naga Baptists presented a large Naga shawl to him in appreciation of all the time he had spent preaching to the local Naga tribes and traveling a long distance to come to Nagaland. And then he called me up and presented me a lovely shawl and declared: "May you be a Warrior for Christ."

I was honored to receive the shawl, although it was appropriately somewhat smaller than the one Graham had received, but it was still lovely, and I was honored to be declared a "Warrior for Christ," although I was a little worried on two accounts: First, I had to make an instant ethical decision: should I accept the shawl as a gift? I decided it was appropriate to do so as I would only use it as a personal memento at home. Second, I thought for a moment about what my mother in Cleveland would think about her son who had had his Bar Mitzvah at age 13 being made a "Warrior for Christ." And I knew my mother would be fine and would be honored, because she and my late dad always taught us to be tolerant and respectful of all religions.

My life had changed forever with my time in India, arriving with one suitcase in 1966 and leaving 11 years later for London, in May 1977, with my wife Rachel; two young children, Yael and Joshua, and enough suitcases and other belongings that it took two liftvans, or large containers, to transport everything we owned.

One liftvan was piled onto a traditional bullock cart and began its journey down the road without fanfare. However, we had a major heart-stopping moment as the second container was piled onto a truck for the journey to Bombay and then by ship to England, because when the liftvan was loaded on the truck, it hung off the back of the vehicle. And so the driver had an easy solution: He slowly started moving the truck, picking up speed, and then seconds later slammed on the brakes. The liftvan lurched forward several feet so that it could fit nicely onto the back of the van, which it finally did. We were relieved, but we promptly went inside and doubled the insurance!

My 24 years in London, from 1977 to 2001, were as eventful as our decade in India had been ... a period of four prime ministers, from the end of James Callaghan's government, through the era of Margaret Thatcher, to her successor, John Major, and then Tony Blair as the Labor party returned to power for the first time in nearly two decades.

And there were also the British Royals, from the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana on July 29, 1981 - I still remember walking down Fleet Street that morning past crowds of onlookers to the AP office two blocks from St. Paul's Cathedral where the ceremony took place -to their divorce in 1996 and, finally, to the death of Princess Diana following a late night car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.

As I rushed into the AP bureau from Tower Bridge where we lived, my thought was that we had to prepare for coverage of Diana's death as it seemed improbable that she had only been slightly injured in the car crash, as first reports indicated. Sadly, a few hours later, the fairy-tale romance that began 16 years earlier had ended in the worst possible tragedy. Our bureau worked day and night for the next week, until the funeral on the following Saturday, covering what was considered the most significant royal story since King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry the American socialite and divorcée, Wallis Simpson.

Amid the politics and the royals of the 1980s and 1990s, there was also the single biggest running story in the British Isles during our time there, which was the campaign by the Irish Republican Army to end British rule in Northern Island through a campaign of terror and bombings, a story that had a peaceful ending with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement over the Easter Weekend of 1998 when hostilities ended and the main antagonists agreed to work together to govern the province.

The Belkinds did have a close call during the IRA bombings. On April 29, 1992, we heard a large boom as the front doors of our apartment overlooking the River Thames and the City of London financial district blew open. To get around the police cordon, I drove with our son Joshua as close as we could, first over Tower Bridge, and then we walked through the rubble of the bomb and found a helpful security agent at the HSBC building who took us up to the roof so that we could view the deep crater next door of what had been the Baltic Exchange building. Joshua managed to use the ledge of the roof of the HSBC building as a tripod. He then opened the shutter all the way and had exclusive photos that the AP sent around the world. And the next day, newspapers in the United States published a rare father and son byline, with my name over the story and Josh's in the photo credit.

Rachel will tell you that the one time she got worried about me was when I was summoned to the famous Old Bailey criminal court where notorious criminals have been tried for centuries and often did not surface or were ever heard of again! This happened in April 1990, due to the AP's refusal to turn over to the police its full set of photographs taken during riots against Mrs. Thatcher's proposal to impose a poll tax on every citizen eligible to vote. The AP's longstanding position was not to automatically turn over photos to the police, especially when its photos had already been published. We did not want to have our photographers viewed as agents of the police. In the end, a judge ruled that we had to do so, and we complied on the basis that our key photos had been published but we felt it was important to make a legal stand. Much to Rachel's relief, I walked out of the Old Bailey with my head still attached!

Just as I look back on my decade in India and vividly recall spending a week with the Rev. Billy Graham, so do I look upon my two decades in London with a similar, searing memory of meeting another major religious leader of our time, and that was His Holiness the Dalai Lama. When I was elected president of the Association of American Correspondents in 1999 and had to organize a series of luncheons and other get-togethers with important dignitaries, my goal was to somehow have the Dalai Lama be our guest. Thanks to Rachel, who had started a neighborhood forum in the borough of Southwark where we lived, I learned that the Dalai Lama would be coming to Southwark in south London to open a peace garden on the grounds of the Imperial War Museum.

As it turned out, the Dalai Lama's then information officer was a fellow alumnus of the Columbia Journalism School, and ultimately it was worked that that the American correspondents would meet His Holiness over tea for a half hour at the Claridge's Hotel, where he was staying.

The Dalai Lama seemed to enjoy himself so much, as he sat cross-legged on a very proper upholstered chair, that he spoke with us for 90 minutes, an hour more than I was told he could stay. At the end of the session I said to His Holiness that by sitting next to him I had the benefit of being able to watch my fellow American correspondents, who normally seemed tense and serious when they met political leaders, but this time, they smiled and did not even have a frown on their faces. At that moment, the Dalai Lama, who had been conversing in perfect English, turned to his translator, whom he had not consulted with during the previous hour and a half, and asked, "What is a frown?" The Dalai Lama did not have the word "frown" in his vocabulary, and that is what I remember most from that audience with him 17 years ago this spring.

In 2001, after 24 years in London, I learned that a friend of mine was retiring as the Tokyo bureau chief, and I thought it would be good to go back to Asia to finish my foreign career in the region where it had begun.

And three years later, as my assignment concluded and I headed into what I thought would be retirement, Rachel and I were honored to be invited to the annual sakura, or cherry blossom, reception hosted by Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko in the gardens of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Normally, guests do not have an opportunity to speak with the Japanese royals, but in this case, the Empress stopped to say hello as she and her husband moved down the receiving line, perhaps because she noticed Rachel in an Indian sari in the colors of the cherry blossoms. Wearing the traditional formal morning dress, I said to the Empress that we were honored to spend the final day of our AP life at the sakura reception, and she replied in perfect English:

"Journalists are very important, because they perform the important task of informing the world of what is happening in our country and of creating better understanding. I wish you all success for the future."

A month later, our future began in a new city, Washington, D.C., and I was able to begin a new career that enabled me to keep my word to my Ohio State mentor, George Kienzle, to teach journalism at a university one day. I am fortunate that since 2005, I have been teaching journalism at George Washington University, trying to inspire the next generation of journalists.

Ours is a unique profession. We do not need to pass the equivalent of a bar exam, as lawyers do, or the equivalent of a medical board, as doctors do. Anyone can be a journalist, as long as they have credibility, and once they lose that credibility, they no longer can serve our profession.

I would like to conclude with a quote from a column I wrote for the No. 1 Shimbun, the publication of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, when I was president in 2004, a few months before moving back to the United States:

"One does not go into journalism to get rich monetarily, but the rewards are far greater than anything that money can buy."

The then Brussels AP bureau chief, Robert Wielaard, wrote me a note that read:

"Myron, I can tell you are retiring as a very rich man."