Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Click the LISTEN button above to hear the conversation.
Rick Brewer: Former Morning Edition host, Renee Montagne retires today from her long award-winning career with NPR. WCMU's David Nicholas had the chance to speak with her this week as she reflected on some of her most memorable stories.
David Nicholas: Talking with Renee Montagne, who this week reaches the end of a long career in public radio -- some 40 years. And Renee, we appreciate the time. It was such a wonderful piece that aired on Morning Edition last week. Of your time. And in it, you talk too, about finding your way into public radio well at Berkeley. But I wanted to hit rewind a little further back and when -- if you can pinpoint a time -- when did you know you wanted to do this for a living, to be a reporter and to be a storyteller?
Renee Montagne: I wasn't thinking of that when I went over to KPOO and poor people's radio in San Francisco -- With other twenty-somethings, running your own radio station. I wasn't really thinking of being a journalist at all. And I do have friends here at NPR who had, for instance, like a little basement radio program at nine years old. You know, there were a lot of people who knew it. They grew up, thinking this is what they want to do, but I was not one of those people. I kind of -- I got interested in some because I ended up doing it, because it was the one thing I could do when I found it kind of fascinating to go out and talk to people on the street or at event. There was plenty in San Francisco, plenty of access to people who are doing the big stories as well in the world, and I actually got San Francisco’s police badge -- you know, the whole thing -- so no, I learned as I went.
But I have to say, when it hit me when it first came to NPR and I’ve done this for more than 40 years because I was a freelancer for years. But at that point, in that moment in time, I started seeing myself as a real journalist, and finding it like the best ever profession, the best ever life-- a mission, as it were. If you're working with NPR. At that time, that's what it felt like. I would say this: I never thought of it as a career. It just wasn't even—it wasn’t a career, it was who I was at a certain point.
DN: I will leave the word “career” out of it then, and I certainly understand the sentiments. Your reporting from South Africa and Afghanistan—certainly high watermarks for the body of work that you've done. Either of those or another assignment that you think stands out as the most impactful on you, and whether that means professionally or more personally… What would you point to?
RM: Strictly professionally, but also really important, was the last big thing I did, which just predated COVID. The Lost Mothers series. This was a series of stories about women dying in childbirth in the United States at greater -- much greater rates than other advanced countries, and that was.. it both broke my heart. It was touching, it was an intellectual challenge and also I was working with a ProPublica partner, Nina Martin, and it was actually in this way kind of like two gals on the road, because, you know, we were just digging out information. It wasn't that investigative because the information was there, just nobody had seen it. It's very typical of things like that, you know, nobody really put it together, and so we traveled together, we shared interviews. She did the writing part mostly for her end, and I did the haiku part of the audio, you know, the real short versions, but as she says, “the ones that make you cry,” because it's audio and then you hear their voices, and the voices of the husbands and the children. And so that was super impressive, or -- I shouldn't say impressive -- I mean impressed itself upon me.
But you know what? The second one, which is totally personal, is I did not one but two. over the span of 20 years. stories about my father being at Pearl Harbor as a sort of teenage sailor, surviving it, and the story involved his best best friend, who did not survive Pearl Harbor. It involved him meeting my mother as he was shipping out in October of 1941 and got there in December. It involved a ring that he bought for her and, my mother -- he fell in love at first sight, but never sent the ring, but never… I think he saw her once, but really never saw her for 6-7 more years. He had to track her down. She, on the other hand… When she says she saw him come up in a marine uniform -- who by then, had become a marine. And this isn't in the story, but he'd become a marine, but at that time, a Lieutenant. She goes, “Well, when I saw him walk…” He knocked, and she opened the door and there he was, instead of a kid sailor in a sailor suit. He was like an officer in the Marines and she sort of then had her version of love at first sight. So they married and only died six months apart, and they are both buried right near amongst the people who died in Hawaii. They're both buried really close to his friend and his other radio man that died on the USS California. So that story was.. I did it on the 60th anniversary and I did it on the 80th anniversary. If anybody ever wants to see something I love, just look up “Bud Montaigne, December 7th, 2021.” Some of my favorite story.
DN: You paid a visit to our station. You were going out and doing station visits during a period of time, and there were two listener events, and at those, you focused on what you felt went into, kind of, to use the umbrella term, “making good radio.” Do you think those elements are the same now as when you first started in the business?
RM: Well, they're not the same because nothing stays the same, but the audio is still the audio. I hear the same stories and I get this – I have the same reaction. I hear the same intimacy, the same emotion, the same excitement about a voice now on all of our shows, just as I heard in the early days. It's different how it's put together, for sure. You have to have a whole ‘nother set of abilities in terms of the technical stuff.
But no, there's actually a short answer to that. No, actually, the core sense of things… he core audio is still there. Shorter attention span, I would say that, and I think this is true. My two-part series on my father is probably so much better in some ways than my 7 1/2 minute one-shot. Yet that one I might like the best because it just moved along, moved along, moved along. So that's the difference. But that's it, I think, when you get right down to it.
DN: Well, we certainly were able to pay close attention to your work and you definitely have been a familiar voice for all of us in the business and all of those who are listeners to NPR, Renee Montagne. We appreciate you bringing both honesty and integrity to your work. Congratulations on the job well done and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
RM: Well, David, thank you so much for having me and also all your listeners. And I do have a feel for the visuals from having been there. So, yeah, I can imagine you all in my head, and I thank you for listening.
RB: That was NPR's Renee Montagne, a co-host of Morning Edition from 2004 to 2016, speaking with WCMU’s David Nicholas. She's retiring today from NPR, and she will be missed. Thank you, Renee.
