Love BRINGS US TOGETHER
TV journalist Ann Curry explores the power of reunions—including her own parents’ Romeo and Juliet story—in her new PBS series, We’ll Meet Again.
Ann Curry grew up hearing about her parents’ chance meeting, their heartbreaking parting and ultimately their joyous reunion, a love story that she always thought would make a great movie. In that story of love at first sight, Curry’s father, Bob, a tall American Navy soldier stationed in Japan, spotted Hiroe, the Japanese daughter of rice farmers, punching tickets on a streetcar.
Both 18, they fell in love. But their path to being together was far from smooth. Bob had to request permission from his military supervisors to marry Hiroe. His request was denied and he was whisked away for his next service assignment, to Morocco. But he vowed he’d come back.
“My mom told the story of taking my dad to the train station and sitting there for hours after he left, knowing her life wouldn’t be what she wished it would be,” Curry, 61, says. “So, she went on with her life.”
The couple did reunite, as Bob promised, a few years later. They were married and went on to have five children, and their story—Hiroe always called it “Romeo and Juliet, Japanese-style”—has influ-
enced Curry in nearly every way, including her decision to do We’ll Meet Again, a new docuseries debuting Jan. 23 on PBS.
“My parents would be so proud of me for doing this series,” she says of her mom, who died in 2001, and her dad, who died in 2008.
In We’ll Meet Again, the seven-time Emmy-winning journalist, photojournalist and former NBC News anchor and her documentary team tell emotional stories of people who’d previously connected with someone in powerfully transformative experiences, but then lost touch. Years later, they set out to find those people again, often reshaping sad or even terrible moments into ones that demonstrate the indomitable power of the human spirit.
Over the course of each episode of We’ll
Meet Again, viewers journey along with the subjects, whether it’s a Vietnam War baby desperate to find the American father she hasn’t seen for 40 years; a businessman caught in the trauma of 9/11 searching for the woman who steered him to safety; or Reiko Nagumo, a Japanese-American girl interned in a WWII camp in 1942 who never forgot Mary Peters, the young classmate who stuck up for her when she was bullied in school.
“Reiko had long thought about a girl she had met 70 years before,” Curry says. “Her yearning, before she dies, is to connect with her so she can thank the girl who changed her life.”
In the show, viewers follow along the sometimes-arduous steps it takes each subject to reconnect with their person from the past. As each episode unfolds, documents and archives are unearthed and examined; sometimes dead ends are encountered. The process can span weeks, months, years and continents. “The experience of looking for someone is formidable,” Curry says.
These stories are powerful because they’re universal, and Curry expects to hear from a lot of people once the show premieres. “I think there are millions of these stories,” she says. “They speak to who we are and what we’re made of, and also to how much another human being can affect our lives with a word or look or act of kindness.”
DEBATING WITH DAD
A military brat, Curry was born in Guam and moved often, including stints in Japan, Oregon, Virginia and Hawaii. No shrinking violet, as the oldest of five siblings she recalls many an argument with her father after Walter Cronkite delivered the nightly news reports.
“We’d argue about the issues of the day,” she recalls. “My dad would slam down his fist and say, ‘What is wrong with those Vietnam War protestors? Don’t they know it’s “My country, right or wrong”?’ I would question whether we should be in Vietnam, and my father would say, ‘I can’t believe a daughter of a career military person would say that.’”
At that point, Curry says her siblings would clear the room.
“They knew Dad and I were going to engage in a knockdown, drag-out fight, whether it was over Watergate, the women’s liberation movement or the civil rights movement,” she says.
But she sees the value of those disagreements.
“I think my dad was trying to teach me the responsibility to care about the world,” she says. “He wasn’t trying to win. He’d always say stuff like, ‘Ann, I don’t always agree with you. But I’d still vote for you for president.’ ”
Years later, shortly before her father died of cancer, Curry received the Simon Wiesenthal Center Medal of Valor for her reporting on the genocide in Darfur, and her dad was there in the audience.
“I [once] asked my dad, ‘What do you think I should be when I grow up?’ and he said, ‘Whatever you do, do something of some service to someone else. Then and only then will you know, on your last dying breath, that it mattered that you were born,’” Curry says.
Her long and storied career spans delivering the first live news report to an American
audience from the South Pole to conducting interviews with U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She covered wars, tsunamis and earthquakes. But she always gravitated to stories of the disenfranchised.
“When all the media goes in one direction, I’ll go the other,” she says. “I want to find the stories that haven’t been told, and I have always cared about telling the stories of those who aren’t heard.”
Curry remains a fan favorite since she left NBC’s Today show in 2012, where she served for 15 years, first as a news anchor and then as co-anchor. From 2012 to 2015, she was a national and international correspondent for NBC News and an anchor-at-large for Today.
“If I’m on a flight, I’ll get a napkin with a note with hearts and flowers from a flight attendant saying, ‘We love you, we miss you,’” she says. “It’s been this kindness from fans that has lifted me through all the good times and bad.” (At press time, Curry had no comment on a possible return to NBC after anchor Matt Lauer’s departure.)
‘SAVING THE WORLD’
Having a supportive family has enabled her to travel to cover the stories she longs to tell. Married for 28 years to software executive Brian Ross, and mom to daughter McKenzie, 25, and son Walker, 22, she says Ross has always been hugely supportive.
“I married a person who would tell our kids, ‘I know Mom’s not here, but we have to support her in her life’s purpose,’” says Curry.
She recalls one particular assignment that was challenging for her kids when they were young. “I remember going to my boss, [former
Today executive producer] Jeff Zucker, telling him that we were witnessing genocide in Bosnia and that we had to do more coverage,” she recalls. Curry wasn’t angling for the assignment, but Zucker gave it to her—telling her on the phone when she was at the store to buy her daughter’s Easter dress. And she had to leave now.
When Curry told McKenzie that she wouldn’t be home for Easter, her daughter burst into tears.
“I got on a plane and camped out in Kosovo, going live every morning with the story for a week,” Curry recalls. “I finally called my kids on a satellite phone on the way out. I apologized for missing Easter, and my daughter said, ‘Mom, it wasn’t right what was happening to those people.’ When I got home, my kids had written signs saying, ‘My mom is saving the world.’They recognized something that was bigger than me and them and, in that way, maybe it was OK I missed Easter.”
These days, her kids are in their 20s, and as head of her own production company, Curry has more control over her schedule than ever. She still works on projects that mean something to her—like We’ll Meet
Again—and makes time for family.
‘I think there are millions of these stories. They speak to who we are and what we’re made of, and also to how much another human being can affect our lives with a word or look or act of kindness.’
During a Curry Christmas at their New York City home, the family keeps to tradition.
“We fill our Christmas stockings, and I make the kids necklaces with bells on the ends,” she says. “We fill the house with Christmas lights, and not just on the tree. We put them on the pictures, furniture, doorknobs and the banister.”
The day is spent opening presents and eating.
“I make a standing rib roast and my husband helps me make Yorkshire pudding,” she says. “I also make a really mean sugar cookie. It’s Martha Stewart’s recipe and includes grated orange rind. You use just a touch.”
Ultimately, at this time of year when thoughts turn toward thankfulness, Curry senses that her life has come full circle with her new series. In a way, she’s met herself again.
“The show reminds us of how human we are,” she says. “It reminds us of our capacity to be powerful in each other’s lives and to be compassionate in ways that I think are fundamental to the way we’re made, but sometimes we can easily forget.
“When we act with compassion, that makes our lives valuable,” she says. “I know that when people watch these episodes, they will get something out of it. I also know that the people we interviewed have been affected for the good. I feel lucky I can try to do good in this world.”