On The Job: From Hired to Retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Watergate got Karen MacPherson interested in journalism. 9/11 made her rethink her priorities. Now she's doing the work she loves, as children's librarian in a small Maryland town. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| This is an iHeart Podcast. | |
| The day of 9 11, I was actually off and had to go in. | |
| My husband was also a reporter. | |
| We were both working in the National Press Building. | |
| The rumors were that the press building was also under attack. | |
| And so that was pretty scary, thinking, you know, we could be leaving our kids orphans. | |
| Imagine having the kind of job where you always have to run toward rather than away from danger. | |
| That's the kind of job Karen McPherson had on 9-11. | |
| But that day changed everything for Karen. | |
| Her story in a moment. | |
| First, here's Sean Hannity to introduce you to our new podcast on the job from hired to retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. | |
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| I'm Steve Mencher. | |
| Karen McPherson wanted to be a journalist her whole life. | |
| And she had found steady and meaningful work in that profession until the day she realized there was one thing more important than her success in the newspaper business. | |
| But we're getting ahead of the story, which starts ironically, as you'll see, with a children's book called Harriet the Spy. | |
| Harriet the Spy had a very interesting life taking notes and spying on her neighbors and friends and uh then sort of writing things up. | |
| And she at one point ends up being part of the newspaper at her school. | |
| And I thought, wow, that's so interesting. | |
| And I had thought that I wanted to be a writer, and my mother, ever practical, would say, you know, you need to think of something, uh kind of writing if you are interested in writing that you can make a living from. | |
| And I thought, well, in this book, there's this newspaper. | |
| Now she's just it's just a school newspaper, but and that started me thinking about newspapers in general. | |
| So it was about then that I started thinking that I might want to be a newspaper reporter. | |
| Talking about her work got Karen thinking about her dad's career. | |
| She imagined that his parents had a path picked out for him. | |
| He was a rather wild and crazy person. | |
| He went to Catholic high school and was um destined by his parents. | |
| They decided he would be the priest, his older brother was going to be the doctor. | |
| To be a priest, he'd have to get through seminary. | |
| And it wasn't very long. | |
| Before he was kicked out for drinking and women, so I think the army and the para troops particularly was a good place for my dad. | |
| Because you can do that kind of sort of wild and crazy stuff, but it's for the army, and let's it's uh sanctioned. | |
| My dad died very young at age 52, and uh toward the end of his life, he really came to the conclusion that he really wanted to be doing something different, so he actually changed careers at the end of his life, and he became a teacher, uh high school teacher. | |
| Now tell me about your mom. | |
| Did she work outside the home? | |
| Did she have a profession? | |
| Did she go to school for something in particular? | |
| Yes, my mom actually was uh one of the original people working, at least in my neighborhood working outside the home. | |
| She at the at one time she was the only one working outside, the only mom working outside the home. | |
| Um my mother had taken one year off uh when I was born, and um my father basically said you need to go back to work. | |
| My mother was a teacher. | |
| And she started, she loved teaching high school, but um, as she had me, and then later my sister, she ended up teaching kindergarten for a while because it was really no daycare near us because most moms were home. | |
| If your mom was the only one working outside the home, did the other wives look at her ascance or do you have any sense of any of that? | |
| Oh, yeah, definitely. | |
| You the uh my mom was regarded as sort of an oddity, and she it was a little hard for I think it was hard for her. | |
| It was a little hard for me. | |
| And then later, some of the women in that neighborhood started uh going out to work for pay and things. | |
| It wasn't like they weren't working, they just were working in the house, and certainly that was regarded as as uh you know what women should do at that time. | |
| As Karen went through school, first high school, then college, she was on the path to becoming a journalist. | |
| Something she'd longed for since her Harriet the Spy days. | |
| Her path was clear. | |
| From Trinity College in Washington, D.C., she'd go to the most respected journalism school in the country, Columbia University. | |
| But there was one small problem. | |
| There was a lot of uh competition to get in, and in fact, um I missed a sort of one step in that when I was in college, that's when the Watergate hearings were held, and there was Bernstein and Woodward, and everybody wanted to be a reporter. | |
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| Carl and I were on the Metropolitan staff, and when we were first told that it looks like the dimensions of this are greater, that there'd been wiretapping, maybe lives were in danger. | |
| Carl said, We've got to go see Bradley. | |
| Skipped the chain of command totally, and you called him at 2 a.m. at home. | |
| We have to come see you. | |
| That's Bob Woodward in 2011. | |
| Talking about Watergate and his work with Carl Bernstein at an event commemorating the 35th anniversary of the film All the President's Men. | |
| The discussion took place at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas. | |
| Bradley is Ben Bradley, at the time the executive editor of the Washington Post. | |
| And so we go to his house and he comes to the door in his jammies or what uh bathrobe or something, and then we say, We you can't we can't talk in the house, we have to come out on the line. | |
| We're totally crazy. | |
| Right. | |
| And it was, you know, what in the middle of the night, you know, you're gonna take me out on a lot of my underwear? | |
| And we you know, you kind of think is he gonna call the guys with the white coats to have these guys hauled off, and we start t we tell him that this is all gonna explode. | |
| You know the rest. | |
| Ben Bradley and post owner Catherine Graham backed the reporting duo, the Watergate hearings, deep throat. | |
| Suddenly it was as if everyone was heeding the lessons of Harriet the Spy, wanting to write things down and change the world. | |
| So my little clear path of me going into Columbia was almost disrupted because I remember the Dean of Students at Columbia saying to me when I interviewed with him that while you certainly would be a perfect candidate, but now we're thinking about letting people who've never had any interest in journalism are suddenly inspired because we feel like that's important too. | |
| And I remember just being crestfallen that that might like somebody like that might take a place for me when I really had wanted this all, you know, for all these years. | |
| But it was competition for sure. | |
| Now, let's talk a little bit more about Watergate, because it must have inspired you as well. | |
| There is a generation of reporters, unfortunately they're getting well, for better or worse, they're getting a little older now. | |
| Yes. | |
| Who were impelled to go into journalism by Watergate. | |
| Right. | |
| I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. | |
| Vice President Four. | |
| We'll be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. | |
| You know, kids throw around the word my kids awesome all the time. | |
| Which we began this section. | |
| And I remember feeling this incredible awe that I will not be here in the office. | |
| Bob and I were in the office and we watched the next two speech in the post handed out baloney sandwiches for the those who wanted to stay that night. | |
| Catherine, the first thing Catherine Graham came downstairs and she said no gloating. | |
| Let me tell you, there was no reason to gloat. | |
| It was a moment of such awe that that that the system had worked, and we had been a part of that working. | |
| Uh and the right thing had happened. | |
| You know, Woodward and Bernstein became kind of heroes, but what specifically about what they did do you think made people want to go into the newspaper business? | |
| People found that there was a way of truth telling that they hadn't really seen before. | |
| I think that for many people, and I would say myself included, it was exciting to see that something you wrote could actually make this kind of thing happen. | |
| And all this drama and you know, some tragedy and uh it all it just it just compelling uh in that way, the way that the story came about. | |
| And I it for me, because I was already in Washington, D.C., I could go to some of the hearings, and in fact, with some teachers' blessings, they would say, yeah, let's just skip class and head off to the hearings. | |
| You could they hang out in the back of the room, whatever. | |
| And to see that up close and in person was was pretty amazing, frankly. | |
| And then the personalities, the per for me, the personalities was intr were very interested. | |
| Why did somebody, you know, want to do what they did in Watergate? | |
| And then how would somebody like Bernstein Woodward, who in some ways just sort of fell into a lot of this? | |
| It's almost, I don't know, like a Greek drama that was happening right in front of us. | |
| So I think that really helped um interest a lot of people. | |
| American eleven climbing table level three, five, zero. | |
| If Watergate brought tons of people into journalism. | |
| The other headline story of Karen's generation happened on September 11th, 2001. | |
| Everything will be okay. | |
| If you try to make any moves, you'll injure yourself and the airplane. | |
| That's the right. | |
| Can you look out your window right now? | |
| Can you can you think out about four thousand feet about five E for your pull right now? | |
| Looks like he's Yeah, I feel five years. | |
| This is what this is what I foresee that we probably need to do. | |
| We need to talk to FAA. | |
| We need to tell them if this stuff is going to keep on going, we need to take those fighters. | |
| There is a report of black smoke in the last position I gave you. | |
| Good evening. | |
| Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. | |
| Karen MacPherson was on the job that day and on September twelfth, too. | |
| My editor said I want we want they wanted me to go into the Pentagon and get the story in there. | |
| So of course the metro into the Pentagon was closed, so we had to take a bus to the outskirts of the Pentagon. | |
| And as I was walking from the bus to the through the parking lot, people were running, t dozens of people running towards me away from the Pentagon because it was a rumor, again, that it was under attack. | |
| And it was sort of like at that moment I thought, you know, I'm not really sure why I'm doing this. | |
| There are hundreds, if not thousands of journalists who are writing the same story right now um about 9-11, and why is it that I should be jeopardizing my family for this? | |
| And I also the other part of this is to in fairness to my employers, if you are a reporter and you are really committed, you run toward danger. | |
| That's the nature of the business. | |
| And I decided I just really didn't want to do that anymore. | |
| It wasn't important to me to do that anymore. | |
| So that's when I started thinking about it. | |
| Um and that day I'll just say it was a very eerie experience because I did end up obviously that was a false rumor, and I did go into the Pentagon and where I had been in you know it's like a city over there, and I was wandering around corridors where there was no one. | |
| No one. | |
| And it was a d th it was an eerie feeling. | |
| So that sort of added to my feeling that I'm just you know, I just don't think I should be here. | |
| Now l let's unpack that just a little bit. | |
| Uh you're off. | |
| It's it's 9-11, it's the day you're not working. | |
| You how did you first get news that there were these a airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center? | |
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| Well, my husband was also a reporter and he was at work and he said uh he c he called me and said, turn on the television and something awful is happening, and that's how I first saw. | |
| And then my uh bureau chief called and said, We need you in here. | |
| You you say you didn't really have a choice, but you did have a choice, didn't you? | |
| I mean, uh obviously you loved your job. | |
| Uh you were used to responding. | |
| You were used to that person telling you, you know, what you needed to do. | |
| Um but you did have a choice. | |
| I guess I had a choice, but I didn't feel like I had a choice because my job was the one that we had our we're all on my job, my health benefits on for my job. | |
| And I wasn't sure, you know, what would happen if I didn't go in. | |
| And you know, it just you I think in in an emergency like that, you just think, okay, I'll go in. | |
| And I knew that we did have a good friend who would take care of the kids and would make sure that they did not see the things on TV. | |
| And I think, you know, would would comfort them and would be with them. | |
| So I I wasn't too worried about the kids at that point. | |
| I was worried about the press building thing. | |
| And before I went into the press building, I I did understand I did hear from somebody just outside that that had been a rumor. | |
| So I felt okay about going in, but still. | |
| The adrenaline must have kicked in at some point. | |
| And the also you know, the journalist part of you must have kicked in and said, I have this job to do. | |
| This is obviously the biggest story of my lifetime. | |
| Definitely. | |
| I mean, I think that was definitely part of it. | |
| You're right, the adrenaline does kick in. | |
| And of course, you know, what was heartbreaking, I mean, it was so hard to cover because you know, my story is nothing compared to what people whose love loved ones died, and what's the suffering that happened that day. | |
| It's incredible to think of, do you know? | |
| And I think, you know, I it just you just it in a way of responding to it as a reporter, you just your only response is basically to try to bring out the story and maybe hope it doesn't happen again. | |
| What did you write that day? | |
| What was in what was important to the folks that you were writing for that day? | |
| Basically it was an atmospheric piece. | |
| I talked to people who were still working there. | |
| Um I d you know, and then it was also I remember there was an element, there's a daycare, uh Pentagon Daycare, and there was a I remember trying to find more information about that. | |
| I don't think I f I I was able to find too much information about that. | |
| But luckily that wasn't not in the line of attack. | |
| Good morning in different languages and see if you can hear me with your ears. | |
| Okay, here we go. | |
| One, two, three. | |
| Good morning. | |
| So that was English. | |
| Let's try Spanish. | |
| Here we go. | |
| One, two, three. | |
| Buenos días. | |
| Let's try French, my other language. | |
| We're going to take a short break. | |
| And when we return, Karen's decision to go back to school. | |
| Her new career. | |
| How it meshes with everything she's done up until now. | |
| And how this chapter of her life is different from the one that put her in harm's way. | |
| You're listening to On the Job from Hired to Retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. | |
| I'm Steve Mencher. | |
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| Welcome back to On the Job from Hired to Retired. | |
| Brought to you by Express Employment Professional. | |
| Shalom. | |
| Karen McPherson is now the children's librarian at the Tacoma Park, Maryland Public Library. | |
| Her decision to try a new career was accelerated by the feeling that her job as a reporter put her in danger sometimes. | |
| And that her role as a member of her family was more important than the glory of continuing to face that potential danger. | |
| In order to make the switch, she needed to go back to school. | |
| It took me five and a half years to get my master's degree, which is a long time. | |
| I had to get permission to go for that last half of a year because you are supposed to have gotten your degree by five years. | |
| But they did give me permission because I just needed to take one more class. | |
| So what are one or two of the the classes that that you did take, especially ones that might have been of of the highest interest for you? | |
| Aaron Ross Powell Right. | |
| Okay. | |
| Well, I have to tell you when I first and like many people who go to a library school at first, you're thinking, oh, books and all that. | |
| But it's it's these days it's mostly technology. | |
| It's it's called information studies, information science. | |
| But the classes I like the best, of course, were uh I took a class in children's literature, uh that was an elective. | |
| I took a class in young adult literature, uh, another elective, and then the one that I when I switched tracks part way through, uh, it was children's services in the public library. | |
| And that was probably the most important class I took because it it really related directly to what I do now. | |
| Remember, you're the milkshake, here we go. | |
| New milk, pour some milk, and you take a little cream, pour some cream, stir. | |
| Eventually, Karen figured out where her main interests were, and she headed down the path she's on now. | |
| Guys ready? | |
| Oh my, two, three, four. | |
| Milkshake, milkshake, shake it up, shake it up, milkshake, milk shape. | |
| No, now just to look backwards over your shoulder a little bit, the the years in which this is happening, and starting with your interest in 1990, going through 9-11 up to the current time. | |
| Approximately I I've read 60% of newspaper jobs in the country went away. | |
| Yes. | |
| And so was that any part of your decision-making process that looking around and and thinking that this is not a growth opportunity here? | |
| It was starting to be as I as I was continuing through school, but more toward the end of it, because I guess I always felt that, well, I could get a job because of all the experience I had as a newspaper reporter. | |
| But you know, it turned out that, you know, my job did go away. | |
| And the jobs were not that easy to uh as a journalist, and it were not that easy to get. | |
| No. | |
| Woo! | |
| Circle time is a very different thing than story time. | |
| Circle time is when you have a group of kids, usually a pretty large group of kids and adults, and the kids are anywhere from birth through age five. | |
| So you don't there's no way if you're having fifty or sixty kids and adults in a space, there's no way that you can s have everybody sit and quietly read books, a book that's gonna work for everybody. | |
| It's just not gonna happen. | |
| So the idea of circle time is that you are doing a lot of kinesthetic learning with your body, and you're learning rhymes and you're doing finger plays and songs, and that is all very valid ways to learn um early literacy concepts and sort of building on that. | |
| Even a baby, you're doing this and they are getting you're getting your baby ready to read. | |
| We know that now from the ri the brain research. | |
| You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it out about the pokey and you turn yourself out. | |
| That's what it's all about right now. | |
| You push your right foot in, you push your right foot out, you push your right foot. | |
| So Circle Town becomes a sort of very community-building thing, but we are also learning and helping our kids get ready for reading. | |
| And it's not just the kids who are learning, the adults are learning how to do this kind of thing with their child or the children they care for. | |
| We have a number of caregivers who come to circle time as well. | |
| When I first started this job, I really didn't quite understand how much of a performer I had to be. | |
| I mean you're going to write I sing, I dance. | |
| You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. | |
| I speak, you know, I it's a it's a whole thing that I I was used to being a reporter and asking people questions, and they were the performer, basically, in that sense. | |
| And here I am now up on the stage, whatever. | |
| And I become a public persona uh because as it's as children's librarians are everywhere in any community, there they they be you know, you walk down the street and you see little kids and they're like, Oh, there's Miss So-and-so. | |
| Yeah, you are uh you you are a public persona. | |
| So when you're most philosophical, how do you how do you see your role? | |
| Well, I guess I see my role as sort of a guide or a shepherd, perhaps, maybe, sort of shepherding both the kids uh and at first kids and their adults, their grown-ups. | |
| Um, and then later on more of the kids, you know, into um sort of the world of books, the world of ideas, uh and then sort of empowering them to sort of become their best person out in the world and to and to to grow. | |
| I feel like it's a gift uh and a huge responsibility that to be you if you do it right. | |
| I mean you can really have uh have an impact on the next generation. | |
| Over there. | |
| Is he following me? | |
| Oh my goodness. | |
| Well, who else are we gonna see on this wall? | |
| Okay, now do you have a timeline about uh retiring from this role? | |
| I know you live in this community uh nine miles from the White House uh where we're sitting, where all of the people in town who are have government jobs are starting to retire. | |
| Uh lots of friends, I'm sure, and other people that you know. | |
| What is all of that look like for you? | |
| Well, you know, I haven't I I have thought about it a little bit, but I love my job so much. | |
| It's hard. | |
| You know, I'm not I still have a few years before turning 65, and I feel like I feel that I really enjoy it uh so much that I don't want to stop. | |
| I do see a lot of my friends who've worked in the same career for so many years, they're tired and they're ready to retire. | |
| But I actually had that sort of ten years ago, got to change careers, and that is given sort of new life to my interest in my, you know, in what I'm doing. | |
| At the same time, I realize, you know, we all have this finite amount of time here on the earth, and it's like, well, I don't want to miss my opportunity to have some time totally to myself with my husband and family and travel and do things like that. | |
| So I'm still it's still in the future. | |
| I'm still very much weighing, you know, what I would do, but I feel like I have to be smart and think about some kind of an end date at some point because I do feel like I might run out of time before that. | |
| What would you do if the boss came in today and said, geez, we've gotten some bad news from the city council, uh, we're not really able to have a children's librarian anymore. | |
| What what would you do? | |
| Wow, I guess I would say, I would say, let's let's figure out how we can convince them otherwise. | |
| Give me some advice. | |
| I'm I'm someone who has had a career. | |
| I'm in my 40s, maybe early 50s. | |
| The career I have, I realize is not the exact thing that I really want to be doing. | |
| How do I get started going toward the light? | |
| You know, going toward that place w where you are at, where where one could say, gosh, she's really doing what she wants to do, and I I envy that, and that's what a great place to be. | |
| Right. | |
| I guess I would think about start by thinking about what you like to do that make that gives you happiness and fulfillment uh that your job currently is not and so what's that? | |
| What is that? | |
| So for me, way back when that was children's literature, I was writing that, I was doing that as a sideline. | |
| So that was what and I I like working with kids. | |
| So okay, so what careers, what could you do with that, and start sort of researching things. | |
| You might work with a a career coach. | |
| Some I know some people who've done that recently. | |
| And uh then I guess I would start, once you decide what you're interested in, then start thinking about, well, okay, how could I do that? | |
| What are the obstacles towards doing it? | |
| For example, you know, having to still work and go to school, and then see how you can get past those obstacles or at least get over those obstacles. | |
| Also, be willing to take help in any form from your friends and family. | |
| I really it does take a village, it took a village for me to get to change careers to get this master's degree. | |
| And I, you know, really looking at it at first, I wasn't sure I could do it. | |
| I was pretty daunted by the idea of having to get another master's, but I with a family and working. | |
| But you can do it if you I think you just need to accept help. | |
| And I also do I think you have to be realistic about how hard it may be. | |
| Very good. | |
| Very good. | |
| Yay! | |
| Very good, very good, yay. | |
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