July 17--There was a time, not so very long ago, when Linda MacLennan would walk into a restaurant and the eyes of all the people in the place would turn toward her and whispers would fill the air.
Such is the nature and the burden of being a local television anchor.
It is a curious thing, our idolatry of people who read the news to us. But this nightly communication is so intimate that strangers are apt to feel a kinship that transcends the tube. "If you are on TV, it's very easy to become a big celebrity here," MacLennan says, sitting in a quiet Wilmette restaurant, a dozen years removed from the cameras and the lights and the fans. "People were always, at best, saying hello or asking for autographs, and, at worst, telling me what I should be wearing, what hairdo I should have."
MacLennan arrived here in 1987, a fresh and fresh-faced 30-year-old Canadian, and settled into the old WBBM-Ch. 2 studios on McClurg Court for a long stay that began as a reporter and co-anchor of its afternoon news. She was paired often with another newcomer named Lester Holt.
Holt is, of course, still in the news business. For a large number of people -- the nearly 8 million people who watch his "Nightly News" on NBC, tops in the network news wars since he took over as permanent anchor June 18 -- he is the news.
He follows in the footsteps of such camera-friendly men as John Cameron Swayze, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, John Chancellor (who, as many may have forgotten, started his career in journalism here as a copy boy for the bygone Daily News), Tom Brokaw and, ahem, Brian Williams.
"I could not be happier for Lester," says MacLennan. "He and I kind of grew up in the business together, and nobody, and I mean nobody, has worked harder than Lester."
Holt has fond memories of Chicago and of MacLennan.
"My God," he says. "I was there for 14 years. That was my first full-time anchor job, and Linda and I shared so many things, had to learn so many things in a short time.
"Chicago is such a great news town, and audience expectations are so high. We had to learn the city, its politics and its racial tensions, all of it. It's a complex city."
And it was a complex (i.e., chaotic) station. In April 1989, MacLennan replaced Walter Jacobson in the anchor chair alongside Bill Kurtis, staying there, when, in 1995, Holt replaced Kurtis.
This Lester-Linda team lasted until 2000, when the two were replaced by Carol Marin in a bold but ultimately unsuccessful single-anchor experiment that lasted less than a year. There were more changes for MacLennan -- fast and, frankly, musical chairs-fashion to the point of idiocy (and featuring her alongside now-forgotten faces such as David Kerley, Michael Ayala and Antonio Mora). In 2003, she took a contract buyout and left television with a brief on-air goodbye.
By then, Holt had moved to MSNBC and then on to the network, making his steady, hardest-working-man-in-news-biz climb to his current perch. Given the arc of his career, it's a bit surprising to learn that at one time he never imagined working any place but here.
"Look, we are all ambitious in this business," he says. "But I never really looked at Chicago as a steppingstone. I was focused here. My wife (Carol) and I bought our first house here. Our two children (Stefan, now morning news anchor on WMAQ-Ch. 5, and Cameron, working in the financial sector in New York City) were born here. I easily could have been happy there forever. But things happen, and for me, it's all been good."
Yes, things happen, and Holt says, "One of the coolest things for me in my time in Chicago and afterward has been watching Linda grow."
The growth he refers to was both on and off camera; the two still talk every once in a while and exchange emails.
"I know he is very happy and he knows I am happier than I have been in many years," MacLennan says.
There are many reasons for this, and these are the three most important: Taylor, Carson and Charlotte. These are her children, age 21, 20 and 16, respectively. Taylor is studying economics and political science at the University of Indiana. Carson is studying musical theater in New York. Charlotte will be a junior in high school.
MacLennan married an attorney in summer 1992 and spent the ensuing years living in the city before moving to a large home in Wilmette in 2005. Even with plenty to occupy her time and energies, leaving television left her feeling unmoored.
"I'd been in the business for 25 years," she says. "That was all I had ever known, and I sort of went on a bad tear at first. But as the years passed, I found myself increasingly busy with the kids and more and more comfortable with myself."
She got divorced a year ago and lives in a smaller house a few miles north of what was the family home. She has good friends. She has an active social life. She spent some time as the executive director of the Wilmette Theatre, and a lot of time taking photos.
"I really got back into photography after Charlotte was born, but I have been taking photos since I was a kid," she says. "I shoot every day, something every day whether it's a blood moon or one of the kids' events." As she writes on her website ( www.lindamaclennan.zenfolio.com): "My camera and I are tantalized by everything I see. ... In nature, in the man-made, in the skies. The world around us is in constant change, bringing something new to capture every day."
But back to the TV years.
For a time, before being hired as the Tribune's television critic in 1988, I did some freelance on-camera reporting for WBBM and became pals with MacLennan.
"I do think much of Lester's success has to do with the fact that he didn't go out with us after work for drinks," she says, laughing. Indeed, she and I and a few others at the station used to spend time at such places as the long-shuttered Gold Star Sardine Bar.
"That was a really special place," says MacLennan.
And with that our conversation gets further peppered with shared memories. There was the late night at a downtown club where her date, a famous author, kept spilling drinks with frightening consistency. There was the night an attorney, noticing MacLennan frantically trying to catch a cab outside the old Carlucci restaurant on Halsted Street to get back to the station in time for the news, said to her, "Here, take my car," and handed her the keys to his Jaguar, saying, "Don't worry, I know where to find you."
There was also the time she and I shared a stage for a live broadcast from Taste of Chicago and spent five awkward minutes trying to "interview" a pair of visiting Asian artists who spoke no English. "I could have murdered the producer who booked them," she says. "But (the artists) were nice people."
Then she laughs and her eyes sparkle. She is closing in on 60 and looks terrific, having lost none of the spirited, curious and ebullient personality she displayed on camera and off when she first came here.
You can see for yourself when she appears at the Wilmette Theatre on Sunday. She will be onstage after a 2 p.m. screening of the film "A Murder in the Park," a documentary about the provocative, controversial and complicated story surrounding the case of Anthony Porter, the former death row inmate spared the death penalty thanks to the efforts of a Northwestern University journalism class.
Onstage with MacLennan will be a former colleague, John Drummond. Remember him? He, too, was a TV news fixture for many years, covering crime, politics and other shenanigans.
After the event, she says, she might join some friends for drinks and then she will go home, where a sign in her bedroom expresses the philosophy that has and continues to guide her life after television. It reads, simply, "Choose Happiness."
"After Hours With Rick Kogan" airs 9-11 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.
rkogan@tribpub.com
