Episode 44: Liz Brunner
A Mosaic of Courage
I remember September 11, 2001, like it was yesterday. I remember exactly where I was when I turned on the television to watch the morning news anchors on ABC7 in Manhattan. They were telling us that we were indeed under a terrorist attack and that we should get out of Manhattan if we could. Things were happening so rapidly that even as the news anchors issued those dire words, their instructions became obsolete as all traffic in and out of The City came to a grinding halt. Not knowing what to do, I joined the thousands of workers being evacuated from high rise office buildings all over the city and got swept up into the teeming masses of people flooding the streets of Midtown, Uptown and Downtown. The East Side and the West Side. From Battery Park to Washington Heights. My friend Cheryl Rogers later told me that she had walked from her office in Chelsea all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge and crossed over on foot to get home to her cat Cookie.
In the days that followed, we New Yorkers, like the rest of the world remained inside, glued to the television. I watched the local News One a lot those first few days, and ABC7, because they were giving us the local, inside scoop. And we needed practical information – like where to go to get food and water. And where people could go to get information on the missing and the dead.
On that day, Liz Brunner sat at the anchor desk at ABC-TV, WCVB NewsCenter 5 in Boston, MA - that city’s top-rated newscast. Liz was the voice of reason, calm and a face that Bostonians all knew they could trust to tell them what was happening. The facts. 12 years later, on April 15, 2013, she would assume the seat at the anchor desk again, as this time terror visited the city of Boston directly with the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the chase for the bombers that ensued in the following days. When she talks about both events, her journalistic resolve melts as her eyes soften. The humanity of the person shines through. It was that tangible humanity that drew viewers to her during her 28-year career in front of the camera. It is that humanity that draws people to her today in her role of executive communications coach for people looking to raise their lives and their careers to the next level of success, or is it greatness?
To sit in the anchor desk with integrity and hold the emotions and expectations of a city or a nation is not easy work. It is the work of the courageous. Courage is a word that comes up often in my conversation with Liz because it is a guiding principle of her life and the many lives she has lived: reporter and anchor, teacher, professional singer, and now entrepreneur. That courageousness has come to her from her ancestors, some who crossed over on the Mayflower and some who lived on the distant continent of India. Both meet in her, creating a legacy that is both improbable and at the same time wholly American.
Her thoughts on the rich mosaic of her life? They are found in her latest book Dare to Own You. Every leap of faith in your life takes tremendous courage. Every new chapter that you write for yourself requires you not to be afraid. Vulnerability is an earned gift that you bestow to others, not something to be frivolously given away.
