NEW YORK – It was part gospel, part jazz, part classical and all heart.
In a stunning memorial featuring a world-class lineup of musicians, more than 2,000 people said goodbye to Peter Charles Jennings Tuesday at Carnegie Hall.
The ABC anchor, who succumbed to lung cancer Aug. 7 at age 67, would have loved it.
Reflecting Jennings’ eclectic and wide-ranging taste, performers included cellist Yo-Yo Ma, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, violinist Natalie MacMaster, and the Gates of Praise choir, who ended the two-hour salute with a hand-clapping rendition of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”
In a nod to Jennings’ heritage and country of birth, the New York Police Department’s Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Corps opened the tribute, accompanied by two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers.
The speakers were eclectic, too.
Describing Jennings as “graceful, yet direct,” Alan Alda reminisced about how the newsman insisted on doing the dishes after dining at the Aldas’ home, and then corrected the actor on his choice of wine.
“Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel, a colleague of 41 years, waxed rhapsodic about Jennings’ matinee-idol looks and debonair charm. With his usual droll delivery, he brought down the house when he said that Jennings “was notoriously attractive to women, even though he only married four of them.”
“The only good thing about losing Peter prematurely,” Koppel added, “was that he still had his hair and his good looks. And even in his last days, he still filled a room.”
ABC News President David Westin spoke of Jennings’ leadership, calling him “a true anchor. An anchor keeps a ship from drifting into dangerous waters. It keeps us steady and secure during the night, and that’s what Peter was to ABC News.”
He also remarked on Jennings’ love of music, particularly jazz. For Jennings, “jazz was more than just a form of music, it was a way of looking at life.”
Speaker after speaker praised Jennings for his compassion, particularly for the homeless; his unquenchable thirst for knowledge; his well-intentioned control tendencies.
And, most of all, they praised his devotion to his wife, former ABC producer Kayce Freed, and his children, Elizabeth and Chris. (Their mother is Jennings’ third wife, journalist Kati Marton.)
In the words of Chris, his sentimental dad teared up “at the slightest achievement by his children or his dogs. Even at the bagpipers tuning up.”
Or, as Tom Nagorski, a senior ABC News producer, put it: “He was the only person I ever knew who got weepy telling about his service on jury duty.”
Jennings had a special love for children, Chris said: “The beauty of children for him was not their innocence, but the intelligence that innocence allowed. He had a childlike awe about the world.”
Chris said he drew solace from a pocket watch Jennings gave him as he grew weaker from his disease. It was inscribed: “Loving deeply gives us courage.”
Despite that inspiration, Chris said there was no way to express how much he missed his father. “Each day is, above all else, a day without him.”
Throughout the memorial, photographs of a smiling Jennings with colleagues, friends and family were projected onto a large screen over the stage.
Freed and ABC News’ Westin planned the remembrance, a network representative said. Jennings was on the Carnegie Hall board.
Attendees included lame-duck Disney chief Michael Eisner, authors Tom Wolfe and Kurt Vonnegut, the Rev. Al Sharpton, CNN’s Larry King, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, CBS’s Mike Wallace and Morley Safer, MSNBC president Rick Kaplan, and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
When Viacom czar Les Moonves sat down next to Jon Stewart of Viacom-owned Comedy Central, ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas quipped: “He’s probably signing Stewart to a contract extension right now.
Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather was there. His former counterpart at NBC, Tom Brokaw, was in California tending to his ill mother, an NBC executive said.
Jennings’ daughter spoke last, ending with a passage from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet:
“Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heav’n so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
—
(c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-09-20-05 1903EDT
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