Susan Stamberg

He was our first, I think they called him program director then, and the man who really conceived of all things considered.

And he told me this story 11 years later, that when I first went on the air, there was quite a bit of opposition, not from listeners, but from the managers of our stations who were worried on behalf of the listeners.

A woman's voice is not authoritative enough, they said.

Women will not be taken seriously.

A woman cannot do news.

Now, maybe in those days, there was one little piece of it that could have been correct, and it was about the voice carrying.

Technologically, we were not nearly as sophisticated as we are today.

We had bad staticky telephone lines over which we broadcast to the country.

Today, we've got satellites, so things are clearer.

And the base band of women's voices is not as strong as it is in the voices of men.

And so maybe my voice didn't carry quite as well as it would today, but that was about it.

The rest of it was prejudice.

Anyway, Bill never said a word to me.

And this to me was such a remarkable show of the quality of his leadership.

He knew if he told me, I was very sensitive about it all.

I was nervous as heck.

And it would affect me.

It would throw me in some way.

It would affect my work.

And he had enough confidence in me to let me keep going, sensing that I would prove myself as I did it and the criticism would go away.