Katie Couric - The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives

Copyright 2011 by Katherine Couric

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Couric, Katie.
The best advice I ever got : lessons from extraordinary lives / by Katie Couric.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64386-9
1. Life skills. 2. Social skills. 3. Social ethics. 4. Lifestyles. I. Title.
HQ2037.C68 2011
646.7009045dc22 2010053892

www.atrandom.com

Jacket design: Tom McKeveny
Jacket photograph: Brigitte Lacombe

v3.1

To my mom and dad, John and Elinor Couric,
for raising me with patience and humor
and my daughters, Ellie and Carrie Monahan,
for teaching me the importance of both

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BORN ON A SUNNY DAY

M y husband, Jay, used to tell people that I was born on a sunny day. I thought it was the nicest compliment I ever received. I guess you could say Ive always been one of those upbeat, glass-half-full people. Experts in the field of positive psychology might conclude that Im hardwired for happiness. When I was a little girl, the youngest of four, my sister Kikis friends nicknamed me Smiley. Naturally outgoing and eager to please, I used to memorize photos in the yearbook and then approach various students at football games with salutations like Hi! Youre Barbara McLaughlin. I recognize you from the picture in my sisters yearbook! Before you gag from the absolute adorableness of it all, to paraphrase that LOral commercial, Dont hate me because Im happy. Trust me, Ive been to the other side. My mom, a practitioner of common sense who was raised in Omaha, Nebraska, has often said that no one leaves this life unscathed. Indeed, dark clouds did come rolling in, and Ive survived my share of window-rattling, life-shattering storms. But that comes later.

Growing up in Arlington, Virginia, I had a childhood that was more like Leave It to Beaver than Modern Family . Mine was an old-fashioned nuclear family, with a stay-at-home mom who, had she been born in a different time, would probably be an ad executive or a stockbroker (she bought many shares of Trojan condoms in the safe-sex early eighties), and a father who was thoughtful and intelligent, hardworking, a voracious reader, and a bit of a taskmaster who expected excellence from all four of his children. Add to that three older siblings, who paved the way for each one who followed, and a neighborhood teeming with kids who spent endless hours playing Red Light/Green Light and street baseball (with a tennis ball, since no gloves were used) and waging some pretty serious crab-apple fights, and you have an upbringing straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Our recreational pursuits put many of the neighborhood kids on the injured reserve list. My own mishaps are, of course, the most vivid in my memory. Having just learned to ride bikes at age six, some of my neighborhood girlfriends and I decided to ride down the hilly sidewalk of Fortieth Street, single file, Indian style. It would have been an impressive showing of our newfound talents if only my best friend Sara Crosman had also learned to use the brakes. Instead, at the bottom of the hill her bike crashed into mine (I was leading the pack, Im slightly embarrassed to admit) and threw me forward. My chin came down on the sidewalk, and the impact broke one of my proudest possessions: my new front tooth. My mom cried, her tears, Im still convinced, more for financial than cosmetic concerns, and I spent many of my elementary school years sporting a silver tooth in class photosa lovely addition to my horrifying inch-long bangs. When Chris Foley tripped me on the blacktop after I stuck my tongue out at him in third grade, it was a bit of a godsend. Two caps looked less fake than one.

So the memories of my youth are a collection of happy snapshots: cheerleading, running track, playing the piano, piling into our station wagon for an occasional vacation to the beach as we demolished the sandwiches my mom had made for lunch by 9 A.M. , taking my sister Emily to New York to travel across the ocean to spend her junior year abroad while she was at Smith College, going to my brother Johnnys baseball and basketball games, watching my sister Kiki driving off in my dads racing-green Sunbeam Alpine (his one midlife indulgence), her pom-poms peeking out as she headed to a high school football game. The accompanying score would be provided by ten years of Debussy and Chopin, courtesy of my piano teacher, Mrs. Richmond. I was the only one in my family who kept up with lessons, but because I play by ear, and, like Irving Berlin, play everything in the key of C, I often slacked off when it came to actually reading music. But I still love to sit down, even today, and figure out a song Ive just heard or dust off some classical pieces from my early years. All these things made up a childhood that gave me a healthy sense of who I was and no boundaries for what I might become, although at the time I had no idea. To some, it might seem pretty ordinary. For me, it was heaven.

I often wish that I could bottle my parents special recipe for raising happy, healthy, successful children. My dad always encouraged us to do our best, and there was accountability when we didnt. A cerebral, gentle man, but a tough disciplinarian, when he called to us and we responded, Yes, he would say, Yes what? We were required to answer, Yes, sir, although my brother Johnny, who had a slight lisp when he was little, would say, Yeth, thir! My mom, funny and creative, was the personification of the adage An idle mind is the devils playground. Saying Im bored was tantamount to committing murder, and we were always enrolled in summer school, primarily because she wanted us out of her hair. One summer, when all the other classes were full, she put Emily, a stellar student, in remedial reading, which clearly helped her graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College.

My moms motto was Let em know youre there! She obviously wasnt keen on raising vanilla shrinking violets. But both my parents gave each of us the launching pad we needed to succeed, and my siblings and I felt their presence in everything we did. The best illustration may be the joint-task-force nature of school elections. My dad would help us write our speeches, like the one in which my sister Kiki promised to break all records as recording secretary and then promptly broke one of my dads old LPs on her knee with dramatic flair. My fifth-grade vice-presidential speech adopted the Underdog strategy (the cartoon, that is), as I told my elementary school, Never fear, Katies here. Meanwhile, my mom, the artistic one, was in charge of making posters. She cut up fake money into letters when my brother Johnny ran for student-council treasurer. She also came up with catchy slogans for my sisters campaigns, like the one on a poster that was placed above the water fountain at school, boasting FREE WATER, COURTESY EMILY COURIC FOR PRESIDENT ! Growing up in our house was a fun-filled family affair, and it got a little bit lonelier every time one of my older siblings headed off to college.

I fully anticipated the same kind of family setting when I became an adult, and at first it looked as though I might have it. I married a man who was fun-loving, brilliant, and oozing with integrity. (And he could dance! And I love to dance!) We had two healthy little girls, a marriage that had highs and lows but a rock-solid foundation, and our careers were going swimmingly. When we married, Jay was an associate at a prestigious Washington law firm, Williams & Connolly, and I had just been hired to cover the Pentagon. After we wed, his closest friend and fellow lawyer, David Kiernan, changed the name that appeared on his phone when he was making outgoing calls from Jay Monahan to Jay Couric. A traditional guy who was also proud of my accomplishments, Jay found it mildly amusing.