In many ways, the most famous person I ever met was Richard Nixon. I was a member of the Presidential Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by him in the early ’70s. We completed our report in 1974 and were given an appointment at the White House to meet with him and present our report to him personally.  He had heard that the Commission’s report recommended that simple possession of marijuana be decriminalized and also flatly stated that alcohol was by far the most dangerous substance being abused in America. He didn’t like either of these and so met with us without the usual fanfare … no press, nothing. What we didn’t know is that John Dean had just told him that there was a "cancer on the presidency." I was shocked at what transpired. He was heavily made up (for an occasional appearance that day in the Rose Garden) and shaky. I thought maybe he was drinking but I have no proof of that. Everything he said was a kind of absent- minded cliché. The whole thing was kind of a Richard Nixon parody. As soon as I left the White House, I called Fred Friendly, then at the Ford Foundation and formerly president of CBS News. I said "Fred, I’ve just met with the president and he is bananas." Fred then called his friend, Dan Schorr, and said he had just heard from an eyewitness that the president was bananas. Dan said, according to Fred, "We all know that but don’t know why and can’t go on the air and say ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, your president is bananas.’" Of course, eventually we all knew the reason but it was very puzzling at the time and I dined out on that story for many years.

As a Washington reporter, you quickly become jaded about meeting famous people. A colleague who came from a small town in Texas once complained to me that he had had the same dinner partner three times that week — Elizabeth Taylor, when she was married to Senator Warner.

"Get much sympathy about that from the folks back home?" I asked him.

So let’s see — I’ve met all the presidents from Kennedy on, droves of movie stars with causes who came to testify on the Hill, just about all the royalty living in the last half-century as they showed up for state visits and, one right after the other, for our Bicentennial year; world leaders, national leaders … and probably scads of people whom I have forgotten even if the world has not.

A friend who had teased me about being blasé was delighted when he finally saw me being wildly impressed. It was at a party, when it came out in conversation that an acquaintance was related to Lizzie Boot, who is said to be at least a partial inspiration for the character of Maggie in Henry James’s The Golden Bowl. Apparently my mouth had dropped open, and I just kept repeating, "Really? You’re related to Lizzie Boot?"

Famous? You mean I have to set aside Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Toni Morrison, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Norman Mailer, Jacqueline Onassis, Lana Turner, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, Barbra Streisand, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Malcolm Forbes, Harold Bloom, Donald Trump, William F. Buckley Jr.? Oh, heavens, there are so many of them!

OK – the most famous person I’ve ever really actually met, not counting the above, was Harry S Truman. I admired Harry from the minute the moon and stars fell on him as vice president and he was let in on the secret of the atom bomb on the day FDR died. 

But I didn’t meet him in person until I was working for "Candid Camera" and we used to follow his walks in Manhattan when he came to visit his grandchildren and Margaret. He came to our offices and I respectfully said nothing until I took him to the elevator. There I timidly thanked him for saving post-war Europe with the Marshall Plan. He looked really surprised, then he laughed and thanked me for knowing what he had done and he also winked at me and said, "And thank you for calling me ‘Mr. President’ even though I am no longer in office, I am still entitled to that!"  He was really cute.

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