NEW YORK – Tom Johnson’s profession took him from the White House to newspaper writer jobs in Dallas and Los Angeles to president of NCS. While that left him capable of swap tales about two influential figures — Lyndon B. Johnson and Ted Turner — that is not the true purpose he wrote his memoir.
Instead, it is to inform how his accomplishments got here regardless of struggling by means of a despair so extreme he contemplated suicide, in the hope that others will search assist when in want.
“I want to convey that depression is a treatable illness,” Johnson, 84, mentioned in an interview. “You do not need to kill yourself as two of my best friends did.”
He calls his memoir “Driven.” That appears partly in tribute to his mom, who advised a younger boy rising up in Georgia that he may accomplish what he wished in life by means of exhausting work, and an acknowledgement that such drive comes with prices.
He went to work in the Johnson (no relation) White House proper out of graduate college at Harvard. As a junior-level aide who first labored with press secretary Bill Moyers, his most essential obligation was taking cautious notes in conferences. He was trusted sufficient that when LBJ left the White House to return to Texas in 1969, he took Johnson with him as his high aide.
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This article incorporates materials about suicide. If you or somebody wants assist, you may name or textual content the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or chat on-line at 988lifeline.org
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A public break nonetheless painful years later
So you may inform it pained him to publicly write, half a century later, that he had concluded that “our Vietnam policies were wrong. Disastrously wrong.”
He knew his previous boss felt squeezed, believing in the strategic significance of the struggle however recognizing that it wasn’t going properly and ensuing in unnecessary dying. Johnson recalled asking the former president in the future, as they drove round his Texas ranch, whether or not he would have achieved something otherwise.
“He said, ‘Tom, I will go to my grave believing we did the right thing,’” Johnson recalled. The former president died a number of weeks later.
Johnson went to work for Times Mirror, first on the Dallas Times Herald then as writer of the Los Angeles Times, throughout increase years for newspapers. He mentioned he was finally pushed out by the Chandler household that owned the newspaper as a result of he was deemed too liberal. He then thought of the presidency at NCS, regardless of recommendation that Turner, the founder, was “nutty.”
He took the job anyway, in 1990, and shortly regarded Turner as a visionary decided to spend no matter it took to make NCS succeed as a worldwide information group. In retrospect, the 11 years he spent as NCS president marked its interval of best success as a tv community.
“Lyndon Baines Johnson was the most complex human being I ever had met,” Tom Johnson wrote in “Driven.” “He would remain the most complex human being I knew until I began working for Ted Turner at NCS decades later. In terms of complexity, the two men were in a league of their own.”
“Driven” is stuffed with inside tales about working for each males, however Johnson is evident about his loyalties. He admires them each. He left NCS quickly after Turner was successfully stripped of his duties following the community’s sale to Time Warner; watching that made Johnson’s despair reemerge, he wrote.
Johnson was first recognized with despair whereas he was on the LA Times, retreating from household, mates and actions he liked. His spouse, Edwina, pushed him to get assist, the place he discovered he had a genetic predisposition to despair.
“You really learn the importance of this person who is sharing the journey with you, even when I was hard to love,” he mentioned. “I would lash out at her, I would lash out at my children. Never to people at work.”
Johnson made positive to take away weapons from his dwelling
Johnson mentioned his lowest level got here in 1989 when he misplaced his job as writer. A hunter, Johnson took his weapons to a colleague to get them out of the home. “Having a weapon readily accessible to a person contemplating suicide is a serious mistake,” he recalled.
He advised Turner about his battle with despair when discussing the NCS job. It wasn’t a difficulty. “He said, ‘Hell, pal, let me tell you about me,’” Johnson mentioned.
Through trial and error, he discovered the best drugs to assist him. Johnson mentioned he additionally benefited from speaking with another distinguished males who battled despair: newspaper columnist Art Buchwald, “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace and novelist William Styron.
Johnson was additionally a workaholic, who’d continuously go away the home earlier than his kids Wyatt and Christa awakened, not returning till they had been in mattress once more. He missed so lots of his daughter’s sporting occasions rising up that she needed to confront him: “Don’t forget that you’re a daddy, too.”
“The biggest single regret of my life was that I was not a good father to my children in that regard,” he mentioned. “I was a good provider, but I wasn’t there for them.”
After retiring at 60, Johnson has tried to offer time to his household that he did not when youthful. He’s additionally been advocating for and elevating cash to assist individuals with mental health issues, substance abuse and Alzheimer’s Disease, the latter of which his daughter was recognized with through the COVID-19 pandemic.
And he is been writing ‘Driven,’ which he known as “the most stressful project of my life.”
His journey underscored that you just by no means actually go away journalism: Johnson has been obsessed about ensuring it was factual and honest. “My spouse mentioned, ‘If you ever do one other ebook, will probably be with one other spouse.'”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
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