my life...in retrospect.

   First...you think you’re God...or Christ or...The Durango Kid..and have mysterious powers etc...but that all goes away.  

Then...(returning to your “human” form)...you think maybe you might be successful in radio and work in some big city like Springfield, Illinois some day.

Actually...before that sinks in you are broadcasting to about 22 million Europeans on AFN...American Forces Network all over the continent.  Those were my Army years.

A few years later...I thought maybe I could be President...or Governor or something like that...but that wore off too.

    Or how about an actor?  A couple of trips to dear old Hollywood resulted in catching a baseball in a fireplace on the Bob Newhart show and then ending up collecting mail for the Beverly Hills post office.  So much for acting.

But then...you do find yourself running for Congress and losing.   But it was an interesting experience.

And...if losing that wasn’t enough ...you accidental start a fire that burns down your parents house!  Wow...bad luck...followed by some really bad luck.

So you are down...but not out.

In the boarding house that’s your current home...the phone rings and in answer to a resume you sent them some weeks earlier...it’s NBC News Chicago!  

You interview and are hired as a summer replacement writer/producer for tv and radio news.  Summer replacement means, of course, temporary... but at least your luck has changed.

    Then (with your guardian angel's help no doubt)...someone at 30 Rock New York finds out you’ve been to Vietnam a couple of times as a freelance reporter and bingo...they call and ask if I’d be interested in going to Saigon as a correspondent.  

Wham bang and thank you, yes.

They say...write  five minute newscast...do it on the closed circuit and we’ll monitor it.  I did...they liked it and two weeks later I’m on the big fast plane to the orient.

So...what do you make of all this?

In retrospective I’d say...”that’s life”...and just get on with it.

      This is Stan Major...NBC News...Saigon.

(In the six long months of my assignment in Saigon...that close to my radio reports was heard more often than any other correspondent on any network at anytime...not bad for a kid from Effingham, Illinois, huh!)
  
     More on each of these chapters of my life... forthcoming.
            Stay tuned!