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I was a war correspondent

By Al Owens 4 min read
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Al Owens

Over the years, I’ve aspired to do many things. I’ve failed at many of them. I’ve conveniently forgotten the rest.

That’s what makes me so well-adjusted (for the most part). I can reach back over the years and sift through those aspects of my life that didn’t go the way I planned them.

I kept moving forward, anyway.

Back in 1965, when I took a journalism class at Uniontown Joint Senior High School, I wanted to become a news reporter.

To me, the most noble pursuit of all is to find stuff out – then to tell people about it. The more people – the better.

I’d write post-game summaries of Uniontown’s basketball and football games for the school’s newspaper – Senior High News.

Hardly any of those stories ever made the paper. If they were printed, my name wouldn’t appear as the story’s writer. In fact, during journalism class, the journalism teacher ignored me to the point where I felt obliged to approach her after class one day and ask her why she always ignored me.

Without a pause she said, “Because anybody who looks like you will never become a journalist.”

She wasn’t commenting on my appearance. She was telling me that a person of my race could never become a journalist.

I’ve related this story to many people over the years. Each time I’ve told it, I’ve concluded with the words, “That’s the day I became a journalist!”

I graduated from Uniontown High the following spring. I may have been a journalist at the time, but I wasn’t headed to college to learn how to become one, appropriately.

I’ve never been to college.

What I did in the summer of 1966 was apply for a job down at the Michael Berkowitz

Company on Barton Mill Road – the place they called “The Shirt Factory.”

I became a laborer. I wasn’t a very good one. Oh, I was never late for work. I worked as diligently as I could on tasks that probably required folks who had far more girth than me.

I survived “The Shirt Factory,” (even though I never saw a single shirt) for a year and a half before I could avoid the draft – by joining the U.S. Air Force.

Yep! I was off to the wild blue yonder, with the hopes that I wouldn’t get drafted and then sent to Vietnam.

Two years later, I received orders to report to – get ready – Vietnam.

But before I headed to Southeast Asia, I hatched a plan.

Since I’d convinced myself I was a journalist back when that journalism teacher told me I’d never become one, I pranced right down there to the offices of the Uniontown Evening Standard, and I requested an audience with an editor.

Sure enough, legendary editor Walter “Buzz” Storey was available. He led me to his office, and I began to speak. (When I think of that meeting now, I wonder where that kind of pluck has gone)

I told Mr. Storey I was headed to Vietnam, and I wanted to be the Uniontown Morning Herald’s, and Evening Standard’s “war correspondent.”

I would write about my experiences as a local guy in a war-torn country – for the people back home.

First, let me explain that I had no idea what I was talking about. I was just enamored with the term “war correspondent.”

I wasn’t even sure how a war correspondent would function.

After my five-minute pitch, Mr. Storey did something I never anticipated.

He said, “OK.”

A few weeks later, I arrived at Danang Air Base in the Republic of South Vietnam.

My regular Air Force job was that of a law enforcement officer. So, I would endeavor to write about my experiences, while managing to do my duty as an Air Force cop.

I wasn’t very good at either.

One day I sat down, and I decided to chronicle the goings on at Danang, as I saw them.

I pulled out a pen and a pad, and I wrote, “In many ways I am afraid.”

That was the most concise sentence I’ve ever written. And the last I wrote as a “war correspondent.”

Al Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 50-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.

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