Bill Moyers and "The Place of My Second Birth"
As a boy, Bill Moyers sacked groceries in his hometown of Marshall, Texas, but he went on to become LBJ's White House press secretary and chief of staff, the publisher of Newsday, and the erudite writer-producer-interviewer for several of PBS's most popular series, including Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, Healing and the Mind, and Genesis. People magazine has said that Moyers is "perhaps the most insightful broadcast journalist of our day, an astute interviewer to whom philosophers, novelists, and inarticulate workers have revealed their deepest dreams." Bill Moyers may be a veteran journalist of Washington and New York, but he credits another city as "the place of my second birth." Austin and The University of Texas. In a recent interview on the UT campus, Moyers noted, "I became intellectually awakened here. Somehow coming back . . . I get more in touch with what I really am, who I really am, than anywhere else. That's because I was initially formed here. It's like going back to your birthplace . . . There is a very palpable memory here, a living memory of what I felt and experienced." Speaking about his many outstanding professors at the University, he said, "I can see them in my head right now. I can hear their voices. How do you explain that? . . . Some people talk that way about their religious conversions. But I have that still-fresh sense of really coming alive here." The University of Texas transformed his life. |