THE O’DONNELL FAMILY PROUD to SERVE
NORAH, MARY AND DAD FRANCIS TALK ABOUT LIFE AND LESSONS LEARNED IN THE MILITARY.
Ask Norah O’Donnell and her sister, Mary, about being “Army brats” and they both light up. “I always describe myself as an ‘Army brat,’ ” the CBS news anchor says, turning to look at her sister, who’s wedged next to her on a love seat in the sunny office space of the Washington, D.C., home Norah shares with her husband, Geoff Tracy, and their kids, Henry and Grace (both 14) and Riley (13).
Mary nods. “It’s used affectionately. If you meet someone and say, ‘I’m an Army brat,’ or ‘I’m an Air Force brat,’ now you’re all on the same page.”
Growing up in a military family is as essential to Norah O’Donnell’s identity as her Irish heritage and her devotion to journalism. Her father, retired Lt. Col. Francis O’Donnell (who sits on Norah’s other side), worked as a preventive and public health physician in the Army for 30 years. Mary graduated from the Army’s medical school in 2010 and is chief of colon and rectal surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Mary and brother Matt were born on military bases. Norah was born at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (eldest brother Frank was born in New York City before their father joined the Army), and as a child she lived on bases in Germany and South Korea.
“I wouldn’t have become a journalist had I not grown up in a military family,” says Norah, who has covered the Pentagon, Congress, the White House and six presidential elections in a career that’s spanned jobs at NBC and CBS (where she co-anchored CBS This Morning before
moving to anchor the Evening News in 2019). Growing up in the military “taught me a lot about flexibility and adaptability and being exposed to the world.” It also, she says, instilled the values that define her life—hard work, flexibility, humility, community and public service.
Norah, 47, and Mary, 37, could easily have grown up in civilian life. Their father, 78, joined the military by chance; he was finishing medical training in New York City when the Army drafted him. (“Basically, if you were a doctor and you weren’t missing a leg you were going to get drafted,” Francis says, as his daughters laugh). Over the next two decades, he and his wife (also named Norah) moved their growing family to D.C.; Landstuhl, Germany; San Antonio; and Seoul, South Korea. From 1990 to 1991, he was deployed without his family to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Storm, a time Norah recalls as “the hardest part of growing up as a child in the military.”
“I remember how hard it was on my mother,” she says. “She had four kids at home as a single mom. She did everything from paying the bills to taking care of the house to taking care of the kids. That’s why I never had a pet,” she adds, laughing, “because mom said she couldn’t handle taking care of one more thing.” Her father’s yearlong absence gave her a “deep appreciation” for the sacrifices military families go through.
“There’s a comfort in being able to stay in the same house and have the same friend group and go to a 9-to-5 job,” she says. “To have life be predictable. There is nothing predictable about being in the military, and that puts a lot of stress on families.”
But that same unpredictability is part of the appeal, at least for those who serve, says Norah’s father. “I liked the idea of moving on and trying something new in my career every few years,” he says. “If I had never been in the Army I might have been in private practice somewhere, probably in the same location for the last 45 years. That sounds kind of dull.”
He also couldn’t have done it, he points out, were it not for his wife. “She seemed to roll with every punch. She succeeded with what she did with the kids in every location we were in; she made the most of wherever we were.”
“I’ve asked her how she did that,” Mary says. “She said, ‘Bloom where you’re planted. That’s it.’” So that’s what the kids and their mother did, even when it was hard. Moving is part of life as a military kid, Mary says, “and it builds this resilience and extroversion— even if you’re an introvert, you’re forced to make new friends.”
What all three O’Donnells mention repeatedly—the thing that really characterizes life in the military—is being part of a community, a “family” that includes thousands.
“My parents are friends to this day with the people they were stationed with even for a short period of time,” Norah says.
Mary chose to go to a military medical school (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.) because “everybody there was a family. Army brats keep breeding each other, so it was like half the people there were alumni or from military families,” she explains. “What that means is that before you even become a doctor you’re meeting the people who might be your kid’s pediatrician one day, or who might take care of your parents when they go to the hospital.”
Being a part of that community, says Norah, helped her understand at a young age the idea of responsibility, for one’s own actions and for the myriad
ways our actions affect others—what she calls “the seriousness of decision making.” A decision made in D.C. meant her father spent a year in Saudi Arabia, for instance. “You learn that what happens in Washington matters, what happens in the world matters, that the decisions you make can have an impact on someone else.”
The O’Donnell parents also emphasized integrity. “One of the hardest things for anyone in life is listening to your own true voice about who you are, what you believe in,” Norah says. “My parents always said, ‘If you tell the truth and live a life of integrity, you have nothing to worry about.’ That was drilled into me as a child.”
But it’s not enough just to find your voice. “My mom also always said, ‘You need to use that voice for greater good,’” a mandate that was part of what drew Mary to medicine and Norah to journalism. “We have a public service on my broadcast, which is educating our viewers in an objective manner about the issues that matter,” Norah says, “and to hold public officials accountable for the decisions they make.”
In her own family, husband Geoff Tracy, a chef and restaurant owner, is the “better disciplinarian,” she says, even though he didn’t grow up in a military family. They met at Georgetown, where she was a philosophy major and he studied theology. “I think we wouldn’t have been together for so long if we weren’t pretty much on the same page,” she says. Both believe in assigning and enforcing chores.
“One time my daughter said to me, ‘My friends don’t want to come over because you make them put away their dishes after dinner.’ ” Norah raises her hand with a smile. “And I’m proudly wearing that badge of ‘You Can Clean Up After Yourself.’”
Cleaning up your own mess may be one of those decisions that only has an impact on a few, but it’s all part of the individual responsibility to be a good citizen of the world. And that’s what Army brats know best, Norah says. “Growing up in a military family I realized how interconnected we are with the world.” What you do and how you do it matter, she says. Even the small things. O’Donnell got her first paying Łob at age 10. Visit Parade.com/norah for `etails.