People Column
OPC SENIORS: George Bookman turned 95 last December 22. “I celebrated with a family party at the Yale Club. I joined the OPC in 1958, when I was an economics writer for Time in New York. I have served on the OPC Board and have been on the Admissions Committee forever (mainly as chairman) and on the Freedom of the Press Commilttee. Also belong to the NY Financial Writers, Deadline Club (ex-president), Sigma Delta Chi, and Silurians. I used to act in the Financial Follies but decided some years ago not to inflict that on audiences any more.”
Roy Rowan, former Time-Life correspondent in Asia, OPC president 1998-2000 and founder of an OPC Foundation Scholarship in his name, marked his 90th birthday on February 1. ”I never felt better. Still walking a mile or two each day, still working out with weights and riding the stationary bike in the morning. Still writing books and magazine articles. Still cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for Helen (and why not? She prepared the meals for fifty years), and still counting on Universal Pictures making a movie out of Chasing the Dragon, my memoir of Mao’s revolution. Leonardo de Caprio has been offered the part of the “Roy character,” as Universal refers to me. Most of all, now looking forward to the coming decade and a 100th birthday party. All members of the OPC are invited.”
Helen Thomas, 89, celebrated 50 years as a White House correspondent at a cocktail party in Washington January 26. Guests included politicians she has covered and reporters she’s worked alongside. “She’s my hero,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California and co-host of the party. “She’s shattered so many glass ceilings for so many women.” Thomas said, “I didn’t feel like I was, you know, Mother Teresa in any way, but I did resent the discrimination against women. And I fought against that, but we were, you know, it wasn’t a one-person operation. I was very lucky to be with a lot of women who felt the same way.”
On “60 Minutes” January 31, Andy Rooney, who turned 91 on January 14, described the death and destruction of the Haiti earthquake. Rooney said that from childhood he knew about the power of earthquakes. His father was on a business trip to Japan and drinking tea in Tokyo’s new Imperial Hotel at 11:58 a.m. on September 1, 1923 when the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, killing more than 100,000 people, demolishing thousands of structures in Tokyo and starting fires throughout the city. The Imperial escaped serious damage. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright had designed the hotel to withstand earthquakes. Rooney’s father returned home with photos he had taken of Tokyo in ruins, images that Rooney remembers today.