NEW YORK – ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, wounded in an explosion in Iraq in January, is now walking and talking a little – and responding to jokes about his looks.
“I just looked down to him at one point and said, “You know, Bob, I hate to tell you, but you still have a face for TV,”‘ said his brother David Woodruff.
“And he smiled. And that was the first reaction I got out of him and it was great.”
In an e-mail to Bob Woodruff’s colleagues Tuesday, ABC News President David Westin said the newsman had recently made huge strides and is “definitely doing so much better.”
He is still being heavily drugged to manage pain but is close to being discharged from Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington and moved to a rehab facility.
“They have him up and walking around. He’s conversing with (his wife) Lee, with his children, and with the nurses,” Westin wrote.
“We’re not close to the end yet. But, as he has throughout, Bob is exceeding expectations and giving us real reason for optimism.”
It remains unclear whether Woodruff, 44, will return to the anchor chair. He had just become co-anchor of “World News Tonight” before the incident in Iraq. Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas succeeded longtime anchor Peter Jennings, who died of lung cancer in August.
His speech is still only “a couple sentences here, a few words there,” David Woodruff told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“He’s on very heavy pain medication still. He’s not talking up a blue streak, he’s not sitting there having long conversations with anybody,” he said.
But the newsman included some sentences in Chinese and German, indicating Woodruff hasn’t forgotten his language skills, his brother said.
“My brother’s been an overachiever his entire life. I think none of us expected him to do anything less in this whole process,” David Woodruff said.
“We know that top on his mind is getting back to his family, to his kids, and getting back to doing what he loves to do.”
Woodruff’s cameraman Doug Vogt suffered fewer injuries in the Jan. 29 blast and is recovering at his home in France.
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