Buying the Night Flight Read Free Page A

have helped me.
    Even after all these years of writing, I still wonder at the way that men and women open themselves to journalists and writers and grant us the privilege of entering their lives and their souls, their dreams and their terrors. This is a particular honor in so many other countries, where suspicion is so often a constant handmaiden to existence. And so, first, I want to thank all the people, all over the world -- presidents, caudillos, and rapscallions, yes, but also the good, decent, ordinary people even more -- who opened their doors so graciously and generously to this young American writer during the years that she was "living" Buying the Night Flight. That I was pillaging their souls was incredible enough; that they actually helped such a shameless "thief" is even more wondrous.
    On the professional level, I am first grateful to the editor Merloyd Lawrence, who originally published this book with Delacorte Press in 1983 and to Radcliffe College for sponsoring it so beautifully in their "Radcliffe Biography Series" of American women in our times. I am at least equally indebted to Brassey's, Inc., that splendid publisher, and particularly to President Frank Margiotta and to editor Don McKeon for republishing the book this year and for doing such a fine job with it. Brassey's is a small publisher, which illustrates once again that "small" can exceed in literary and professional excellence.
    On the broader scale, the life that is related here would not have been possible without the tolerance and encouragement of my wonderful parents, Georgie Hazel and Robert Geyer, and my incomparable brother, Glen. I also want to thank Northwestern University, the Fulbright Program, the Chicago Daily News, where
    I worked so joyously for sixteen years, and my own Universal Press Syndicate, where I have been a devoted "creator" since 1980. Universal not only houses and inspires the finest talent in the world but is one of the most genuinely moral institutions in the entire world. Indeed, this book is dedicated, with deep affection and eternal admiration, to our president, John McMeel, but I would surely be remiss if I did not mention my two immediate editors, Elizabeth Andersen and Alan McDermott, two of the best and most agreeable professionals I have known.
    Looking back, I realize I have been blessed beyond belief, in an era when so many American institutions are sinking into the quicksand of cold personal ambition and civic vindictiveness, to have worked consistently with such superior organizations and with such charming and vibrant human beings.
    When we finished this updated version of Night Flight, as people have come to call the book over the years, Brassey's copyeditor noted in passing that the last two chapters were somewhat different from the first. I thought about that, and then I thought, "But of course, they are, I am. now thirteen years older." Wiser? Let's not carry things too far.
    -- Georgie Anne Geyer
Washington, D.C.

Introduction
    You'd have to say the odds were enormous and discouraging. In 1960 a Chicago bookie might have given 1,000 to 1 against Georgie Anne Geyer -- Gee Gee, as her friends call her -- ever being in the position to write this dazzling book.
    Consider what she was up against.
    Her ambition was to be a foreign correspondent. Fine. Most newspaper reporters want, at one time or another, to be foreign correspondents. It's the ultimate reporting challenge, covering another country, a war, a revolution. It's always been the glamor job of newspapering.
    The problem was (and still is) that only a relative handful of one thousand or so American daily newspapers had foreign reporters on their staff. The others picked up the news wires.
    And those who had the foreign assignments dug in and kept them until death or retirement. A city-staff reporter could grow too old just waiting for an opening.
    Beyond the lack of opportunity, though, there was the simple fact that most reporters -- even the very