Verwandte Artikel zu In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing

In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing - Softcover

Woodruff, Lee

 
9780812978254: In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0812978250 ISBN 13: 9780812978254
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In January 2006, Lee and Bob Woodruff seemed to have it all–a happy marriage, four beautiful children, and marvelous careers. Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, but then, while he was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.

In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee Woodruff’s lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again–and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. More than a dual memoir of love and courage, In an Instant is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy–and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation.

#1 New York Times Bestseller

“Gripping . . . The Woodruffs’ devotion to each other is palpable. . . . [In an Instant is] a remarkably lucid, even engrossing story of . . . Bob Woodruff’s recovery, interwoven with tales from his marriage and family life.”
–San Jose Mercury News

“Both Woodruffs [shoot] from the hip, writing with candor about their ordeal and describing it with an intimacy that couldn’t be captured on camera. . . . Their frankness heightens the book’s impact.”
–The New York Times

“Extraordinary . . . All sorts of themes thread their way through this frank, inspiring book: courage in the face of adversity; the pursuit of career at the expense of family; the bravery of foreign correspondents; the fortitude of female friendship. . . . Woodruff’s survival story comforts.”
–The Seattle Times

“A testimony to the power of the human spirit, to the catharsis of love and to infinite hope.”
–The Oklahoman

www.bobwoodrufffamilyfund.org

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lee Woodruff and Bob Woodruff live in Westchester County, New York, with their four children. Bob Woodruff was named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight in December 2005. On January 29, 2006, while reporting on U.S. and Iraqi security forces, Mr. Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb that struck his vehicle near Taji, Iraq. Lee Woodruff is a public relations executive and freelance writer.

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Chapter 1

Lee

Orlando, Florida, January 28, 2006

There is a ride at Disney World called the Tower of Terror, and on the weekend of January 28, 2006, my four children, even the twin five- year-olds, begged me to go on that ride over and over again.

Housed in a re-created aging Hollywood hotel, the ride begins where you climb into a creaky elevator that snakes its way through the creepy premises. An electrical storm kicks up, and right on cue something goes wrong with the power. The elevator in the eerie hotel suddenly drops. The descent is so rapid, so sudden, that it almost sucks your diaphragm up into your throat, and right before the drop there is a moment where you are literally suspended in air, too stunned to scream. It feels as if speed, motion, light, and time literally freeze.

We must have taken that ride a half dozen times. And then the feeling returned the following morning as I rolled over in my king-sized hotel bed. The day before, the kids and I had been to the Animal Kingdom in Disney World. We’d marveled at the African safari ride, ridden rapids in Asia, and gotten soaked as we howled our way down the man-made white water. After an early dinner we’d rented a pedal bike with another family and laughed until we cried as we raced other bikers around the lake, while fireworks from Epcot exploded overhead.

Tucking four kids into bed that night, I silently congratulated myself on a good weekend. I’d come to Disney to shoot a pilot TV show for Family Fun. We’d spent two days on set and then the rest of the time had been the kids’ reward: combing the parks for Disney character autographs for the twins and thrill-seeking rides for the older two. We’d planned to fly back home on Sunday and get ready for school.

Toting around four children by myself was not new. That weekend my husband, Bob Woodruff, the newly anointed co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, was thousands of miles away in Iraq. We spoke to him briefly that day, in between the safari and the rapids ride. He and his crew had had a tiring day covering the Palestinian elections before flying on to Baghdad in advance of President Bush’s State of the Union address. The plan was to bolster ABC’s Iraq coverage at an important moment in the war. The pace was blistering, common to any foreign correspondent who must keep moving and file stories from faraway places in time zones eight to twelve hours ahead of our own.

Bob and his crew were operating on an aggressive schedule with only a few hours’ sleep each night. As usual, the itinerary was punishing. Get in, get the stories about the Iraqi military, anchor from Baghdad during Bush’s address, do some pieces for Good Morning America, and, on the way back, try to finalize an interview with the King of Jordan in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Our conversations with him from Disney World had been short and tough. The cell service in Iraq was spotty and the time difference was frustrating. We had one conversation midday Saturday, as he and his crew were going to bed in a military compound somewhere in Baghdad. He exhaustedly mumbled something about getting much-needed sleep the next day. Exactly what he said didn’t register with me at the time. My daughter Cathryn was determined to buy a puka shell necklace. With my shoulder cradling the cell phone, I negotiated some cash from my wallet while keeping an eye on the twins, who were dangerously close to a fence in front of a bamboo grove.

Later, Bob would swear that he told me has was going to embed with the military for some exercises, while I would swear he said only that his team was going to relax for the day. At the end of our conversation I passed the cell phone around so the kids could say hi. This was common practice in our house—good nights, kisses, homework help, all via satellite. When your father covers news around the world, the phone becomes a primary communication tool, for better or worse.

“Do you feel safe there?” I asked absentmindedly, collecting the change from Cathryn. “Are you okay?” It was a stupid rhetorical question, made more absurd by the fact that we were currently standing in Disney World, “the happiest place on earth,” while he was somewhere in the most violent place on the planet.

“I do. We’re surrounded by the military. It’s fine,” he reassured me. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, couldn’t know that the elevator was about to drop. In the ocher-colored sands on a godforsaken highway outside Baghdad, they were about to enter their own Tower of Terror.

That night I called the front desk to request a 7 a.m. wake-up call. With the bigger kids sleeping next to the twins, perhaps I could slip downstairs the next morning and take a quick swim in the pool before breakfast. Even though it was January in Florida, the water was invigorating and it would be a great way to start our last day in Orlando.

In a few days Bob would be home and we’d be a family again. His new appointment as co-anchor had set a grueling pace for the past month, even the weekends. His days had been crammed with photo shoots, press conferences, and ad campaigns. The new program with Bob and Elizabeth Vargas was committed to go to the story, to have one anchor on the road and one in the studio as often as possible. Bob relished the challenge. It was a new era at ABC News. There was an excitement at the broadcast that was a welcome tonic after the months of sorrow following Peter Jennings’s illness and then death from lung cancer. Bob and Elizabeth would give the news department something to rally around, after feeling like a ship without its beloved captain.

“Just get through January,” I had told Bob, as he left for the Middle East on that fateful trip. It had become a kind of mantra for us after the announcement, as he shot out of the gate as a newly minted co-anchor.

“I really don’t want to leave you guys,” he said, as he leaned into the door frame of my home office, rolling suitcase in hand. He looked exhausted, distracted, and not eager to get back on a plane to return to Iraq for the sixth or seventh time in three years. The town car was already idling in the driveway.

“Just get through January,” I repeated, “and life will take on a more normal pattern. We’ll have weekends again, and we can be a family.”

He reeled off everything he’d packed, hoping I’d figure out what he might have missed. This was familiar territory, this nonchalant leaving. It should have had more weight, but to give it any more importance would have jinxed it in my mind. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gaza Strip: give him a kiss as always, treat it like a normal morning, and he will come home safe and sound. I had a work deadline that day, and the sooner I got him on the road the faster I could finish my task.

Frankly, I didn’t think a lot about Bob over the Disney weekend either. The days had been full and the kids eager to pack in as much as possible. Bob drew sustenance from being on the road; the stories, the energy, the adrenaline rejuvenated him. He loved being a journalist, and that meant leaving us for stretches of time. We may not have always liked it, but we had made peace with it as a family. Periods of being intensely together were interlaced with periods of being apart.

As I rolled over and turned off the bedside light that Saturday night in Disney World, I thought we would all rise to this new challenge of Bob’s career as well. “Co-anchor.” It was good and bad. Good because he had reached the pinnacle of his profession, a plum job in television news, a successor to one of broadcast journalism’s icons. Bad because we would...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812978250
ISBN 13 
9780812978254
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
321
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Harder
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