Bill Seemering

Her curiosity and her energy, and she has this wonderful voice that is expressive, has rich tone color, and it's the sound I really wanted for NPR.

It's a sound that I still think represents NPR the best.

This insatiable curiosity.

And Susan has a lot of fun also.

I didn't need to look at her resume really.

I was really quite blown away by Susan when she came in the office.

And I knew that's what I wanted.

I didn't get a lot of pressure.

Fortunately, Don Quayle, the president, was very good about this, and he also supported Susan.

He was the one that recommended Susan come in to see me.

Now, the stations were expecting the big voice.

They were expecting us.

Finally, we've got our own network, and we'll sound just like CBS.

And we had a meeting of station managers a few weeks after all things started.

And it was kind of a hostile audience.

I mean, they were saying, who are these people?

And I said, well, your listeners will get to know them.

It's okay.

And they, of course, did.

But it took a while for people to get used to what we were doing and to accept it.