Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love Read online

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  For Amy—the most amazing wife and mother to our children and my co-anchor in life.

  Prologue

  Washington, D.C.—January 6, 2014—7:02 a.m.

  It’s Monday morning—the first full week of the New Year. After its traditional—and long—Christmas break, Capitol Hill is slowly coming back to life. As I approach the Fox News bureau two blocks from the U.S. Capitol, I look down at my watch and see I am running a few minutes late.

  I am here early this morning so I can appear on several local Fox stations across the country—part of an affiliate outreach project I began about eight months ago. I really enjoy doing these affiliate interviews. Even though Special Report doesn’t air for another eleven hours, mixing it up with anchors from coast to coast this early in the morning helps me get my head in the game for the rest of the day. It also gives me a golden opportunity to hear what stories might be resonating nationwide and worth paying attention to on tonight’s show.

  Under the banner “all politics is local,” D.C., like much of the rest of the country, is being affected by what meteorologists are calling a polar vortex. It’s a new phrase for me, but frankly, it seems like just a high-tech way of saying it’s very cold outside. Fancy terminology or not, weather conditions across the country are getting a lot of attention on all the networks as I enter the bureau and scan the bank of television monitors in the newsroom.

  Despite the extreme temperatures, much about Washington seems quite normal this morning. Just six days into the New Year, the 2014 political cauldron is already starting to boil up as both parties jockey for tactical advantage in the November midterm elections—still a full ten months away. First out of the blocks on Capitol Hill is a measure to extend unemployment benefits; right behind that—an expected fight over raising the minimum wage. Based on political talking points unfurled on the Sunday talk shows, both sides seem quite comfortable hunkering down in their well-worn trenches for some traditional class warfare over income inequality—a topic President Obama has been talking a lot about lately.

  New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, frequently mentioned as a possible 2016 presidential contender, is facing questions this week over whether he intentionally created a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge in order to punish a mayor who didn’t support his re-election bid.

  So-called Bridgegate has also become quite fertile ground for the late-night comics. Combined with the less-than-stellar rollout of President Obama’s signature health care plan, it is safe to say stand-up comedians everywhere will have plenty of material to see them through the vortex and well into the spring.

  With the Senate confirmation of a new Federal Reserve Chair, a Supreme Court hold on same-sex marriage in Utah, an emerging $1.1 trillion budget bill, an upcoming vote on raising the debt limit and the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq and this promises to be a very busy week. As I sit at my computer checking the newswires, my assistant Katy Ricalde hands me the list of the affiliates I’ll be talking with and the precise times they will come to me in the studio—the same studio we use for Special Report every night at 6:00 p.m. ET.

  WTXF Philadelphia with Mike Jerrick and Sheinelle Jones at 7:30 a.m. WTVT Tampa with Russell Rhodes at 7:35 a.m. WAGA Atlanta with Gurvir Dhindsa at 7:40 a.m., followed by live hits spaced out every five minutes with Dave Froehlich at KTBC in Austin, John Brown at WOFL in Orlando, Greg Kelly and Rosanna Scotto at WNYW in New York City, Tom Butler at KMSP in Minneapolis, Tony McEwing at KTTV in Los Angeles, Allison Seymour at WTTG in Washington, D.C., Anqunette “Q” Jamison at WJBK in Detroit, Ernie Freeman at WHBQ in Memphis, Shannon Mulaire at WFXT in Boston, Tim Ryan and Lauren Przybyl at KDFW in Dallas, Natalie Bomke at WFLD in Chicago, and wrapping up with Jose Grinan at KRIV in Houston at 9:20 a.m.

  Drop in a few live segments with Fox & Friends and Happening Now on Fox News Channel and a couple of radio hits with WLS in Chicago and Kilmeade & Friends, and my first day back following the break is proving to be extremely hectic—just the way I like it.

  After I finish up the studio interviews, I walk through the newsroom and morning assignment desk coordinator, Pat Summers, greets me with a robust “Happy Anniversary!” It’s hard for me to believe, but today is the fifth year anniversary of the day I started anchoring Special Report. Given the job when my friend and mentor Brit Hume stepped down from the anchor chair in January 2009, I am sure some critics were standing by with egg timers to see how long I would last—especially filling the shoes of a broadcast legend like Brit. But 1,305 shows later, and I’m still here. Needless to say, anchoring Special Report the past five years has been the high point of my professional life. By all measurements the program is doing great—consistently one of the top four most-watched news shows in all of cable, number one in its time slot and picking up new viewers all the time.

  As exciting and interesting as anchoring Special Report is, the daily challenge for me is that my world is dictated by the clock and that unforgiving second hand as it marches toward the moment right before show time when my stage manager, Mary Pat Dennert, holds up her hand and counts out “Ten—Nine—Eight—Seven—Six…” When Mary Pat gets to “Five”—everything in the studio—including Mary Pat—goes silent as she performs the rest of the count using only her fingers.

  A few minutes before we go on the air each night I often catch myself glancing up at the clock I have been battling with all day as I try to regain a little non-TV-world perspective. I count the many blessings in my life—my beautiful and loving wife, Amy, and two wonderful sons, Paul and Daniel, who fill our lives with so much joy. Whether it’s a father-son golf lesson that morphs into a sandcastle-making class in the practice bunker, or all three fully-costumed Baier boys—me and the other two—spending a Saturday bouncing around the house playing Batman and Robin; network news anchor or not—it doesn’t get any better than that!

  As the final seconds tick down tonight I am reminded that it wasn’t too long ago when the clock on the wall had an entirely different meaning for me. Instead of counting me down to host a television show or signaling me that it was time to race to the White House lawn to do a live shot, one day that second hand came to a screeching halt. It was June 30, 2007—the day I was confronted with the sobering reality that I was not in control of anything.

  Throughout my career in journalism I always felt as if I could out-hustle the next guy and get to the bottom of whatever story I was assigned. I could always dig down, work hard and tackle the challenge before me. I always prided myself on being able to put my nose to the grindstone, work the problem, achieve the goal, make it happen—all on deadline. But not this time. I quickly learned that if I was going to be of any help to my family in its greatest moment of need I was going to have to reset my priorities, take a leap of faith and rely on a completely different set of resources than I was used to.

  Mary Pat’s silent countdown now at “3…2…1,” the red light on top of the studio camera pops on and she signals me to start tonight’s anniversary edition of Special Report.

  “Welcome to Washington. I’m Bret
Baier…”

  It might be the standard, familiar introduction I use at the beginning of every show, but with tonight’s fifth anniversary I have an extra measure of joy and thankfulness in my heart. I am also overflowing with gratefulness that the Baier family made it through the roughest part of the storm. But I think I might be getting a little ahead of myself…

  Chapter One

  Young Man on the Move

  It was a beautiful, crystal clear day in Atlanta. The sticky heat of the summer was behind us, but we still had a few weeks to go before the full autumn chill would set in. The minute I woke up I remember thinking, “Man, if I didn’t have to go into work today, this would be a perfect day to play some golf.”

  “Maybe I could finish up my story assignments early and still be able to hit a bucket of balls after work,” I thought as I drove to the Fox News bureau near Georgia Tech. Anyone who knows me is well aware of my passion—some might say my obsession—with hitting that little white ball all over God’s creation. And this glorious September morning was no exception.

  Growing up nearby in the Atlanta suburbs, I played golf every chance I got at Dunwoody Country Club, conveniently located about a mile from my house. To be journalistically precise, that stretch of road from my house to Dunwoody was exactly 1.2 miles. It’s a number I will never forget, because during the long summer days of my youth, I would walk it, run it, moped it, and sometimes hitch rides on it to get back and forth to the golf course. Later, when I had my own car but little money for gas, I often begged the Saint of the Empty Gas Tank for precisely 1.2 miles’ worth of heavenly fumes so I could make it home from Dunwoody late at night.

  My first car, a 1982 green Ford Grenada, was affectionately nicknamed Kermit the Frog by my friends. With his forest-green exterior and emerald-green cloth interior, what Kermit lacked in style and class he made up for in character and originality. Multitalented, Kermit actually inspired a few original phrases around my neighborhood in those days. One was the “car blister” because of the way Kermit’s interior roof cloth constantly drooped down and slapped passengers and driver upside the head as though they were in a 1970s’ sparring match with Muhammad Ali. During typically muggy Atlanta summer days, anyone who drove with Kermit’s windows wide open had better be prepared to go several rounds with no corner man to close the cuts.

  Kermit was not exactly the textbook Casanova chariot a young man dreams about to impress potential high school sweethearts, so I was always thankful when autumn came and I could roll up the windows and keep all that head slapping to a minimum. I often drove Kermit, with no sweethearts anywhere to be found, to the Dunwoody chipping green late at night where I would park and strategically aim my high-beam lights just right so I could practice my short game well into the evening after everyone else had left for the day. Golf went way beyond a transitory childhood preoccupation for me. I played so much golf I eventually became one of the top players on my high school team, which went on to win state finals my senior year.

  Although I was totally dedicated to golf during high school, I did fit in a few other activities from time to time, such as being sports editor of the Marist School newspaper The Blue & Gold, interning for sportscaster Ernie Johnson Jr. at Atlanta’s WSB television station, serving as president of the Marist student council, and something that never, ever seemed to make it onto my résumé reel over the years: playing the Cowardly Lion and Tevye in school productions of The Wiz and Fiddler on the Roof. The VHS tapes of those performances are hermetically sealed and under lock and key in an underground bunker somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia.

  After high school I went on to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where I continued playing competitive golf at the NCAA level and double majored in Political Science and English. DePauw offered me a wonderful opportunity to combine the two great passions in my seventeen-year-old life—golf and journalism.

  Sometimes I don’t know how I fit it all in, but along with my class work, fraternity responsibilities, and active social life, I was playing some serious golf under the tutelage of Coach Ted Katula, who became a great influence on me during my college years. Coach Katula, or Katman as he was affectionately called, was a great athlete in his younger years, having played on both the Ohio State football team under Woody Hayes and the Ohio State golf team that included the great Jack Nicklaus.

  A fantastic golfer, Katman was also a brilliant teacher of golf—and life. He had a huge influence on everyone who had the good fortune to be coached by him. And that was a very long list. In fact, just a few months after I landed on campus, a former member of one of Katman’s golf teams by the name of Quayle made some nationwide, nongolf news by getting himself elected vice president of the United States.

  Often when we traveled to golf tournaments throughout the Midwest, Coach Katula, a wonderful storyteller, would regale us with unbelievable tales collected over decades of playing and coaching. But some of Katman’s best stories came courtesy of his days in the 1960s when he served as DePauw’s student activities director and was responsible for entertainment on campus.

  With his winsome personality, sense of humor, and down-to-earth midwestern take on life, Katman was successful in cajoling some very big names to come to the relatively small DePauw campus to perform. Smokey Robinson, Billy Joel, the Byrds, and the Temptations were just a few of the acts he recruited. Once, in the mid 1960s, Katman booked the Isley Brothers for a concert, and they apparently blew the doors off the place—perhaps with a bit of an assist from the group’s young, unknown guitar player, Jimi Hendrix.

  For golf team road trips, Katman would typically start out very early in the morning in a large team van and pick up several of us in front of our fraternity house so we could get to tournament sites in plenty of time to play practice rounds before the actual match.

  One early Saturday morning, making his stop at Sigma Chi, Katman arrived before a road trip that had been unmercifully scheduled right after a formal dance at the house the previous evening. Staying up all night dancing and partying with my date, I completely lost track of time and Coach Katula’s schedule to get the team on the road. The only way I could make it to the van and not miss the trip was to show up wearing my tuxedo. Doubled over in laughter, Katman said, “Baiersy, all my years being a coach here, this is a first! Even Dan Quayle never showed up for a road trip wearing a tuxedo.”

  Another big influence on me during my years at DePauw was former NBC correspondent Ken Bode. DePauw had just launched a brand-new, state-of-the-art media center, and Ken headed up the whole thing. The more time I spent around the newsroom, cameras, microphones, editing bays, and Ken, the more I started to focus and set my sights on what I needed to do to become a professional broadcast journalist. Ken became a great friend and mentor to me during those years, and his course on presidential politics inspired me to step it up in the classroom.

  During my junior year at DePauw I traveled to the nation’s capital as part of a Washington semester program based at American University. Along with taking classes at American, I got my first real taste of big-time news reporting when I landed an internship at CNN working directly with veteran news anchor Bernard Shaw. Being around Bernie was a truly amazing experience. This was after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the United States was in the run-up to Operation Desert Storm. Washington was electric with activity, and I was thrilled to be in the middle of all the excitement.

  There were wall-to-wall news conferences and tons of congressional hearings about Iraq that CNN sent the other interns to. Perhaps to ensure I was plugged in exactly where my gifts and talents could best be utilized, my particular job was to supply Bernie with popcorn during commercial breaks. I have no idea why this veteran broadcaster enjoyed munching on popcorn in between delivering the news, but he did, and my job was to keep the anchor happy. I always thought it was a strange snack for a television anchor since popcorn can easily stick to your teeth. But Bernie really liked his popcorn.

  Another one
of my important culinary jobs at CNN was to feed scripts into the teleprompter so Bernie could look straight ahead at the camera while reading the news. Teleprompter duty is pretty standard stuff for those getting their feet wet in television. Although there are always things that can go wrong, prompter work these days is much simpler than it was then because news scripts written on a standard computer can be electronically sent directly to the teleprompter screen. It’s no longer necessary to print out pages and feed them into a machine.

  But working for Bernie in 1990 with 1990 technology, my job was to take script pages and place them in sequence on a sort of conveyor belt that moved along at whatever speed fit the anchor’s speaking style. One day during the lead-up to the Persian Gulf War, while Bernie was on the air live, I inadvertently knocked the switch to the fastest setting possible. Suddenly, script pages started flying around the CNN newsroom like an EF5 Kansas twister. It was a real mess.

  Bernie deftly ad-libbed until a commercial break, when we could get things, not to mention script pages, sorted out. Mortified and sprawled on the studio floor scraping pages together, I heard that well-known, authoritative Bernard Shaw voice proclaim, “We’ll be right back.” But I had serious doubts I would be. I was convinced this would be my last day in the CNN newsroom. After we were safely into the commercial, I apologized profusely, fully expecting a tap on my shoulder from the show’s producer informing me my shift had just ended—permanently.

  To my surprise, there was no tap on the shoulder, and Bernie nonchalantly dismissed the entire episode by saying, “Don’t worry about it, kid. Happens all the time.” Bernie was not upset in the least. Or at least he was gracious enough not to mention it and possibly destroy the confidence of an overeager college student who aspired to sit in a similar anchor chair one day. It was a lesson in graciousness I would never forget.