One day, probably soon, someone will ask about our trip to Maui. And someone will ask what I liked best about it. And you would think that would be a hard question.

We had a great rental condo, with a view of the ocean and easy access to the beach. We walked in the sand to a bakery for coffee and pastries for breakfast. The temperature was in the 70s and 80 every day, a little windy a couple of times, but balmy in every sense of the word.

On my birthday, we had a wonderful meal at a restaurant on the beach. We found other great places to eat and drinks with umbrellas and pineapples stuck in them.

The road to Hana was as advertised if for no other reason than to say that we had done that, been there, didn’t buy the t-shirt.

We shopped, we relaxed, we did what we pleased. Even retired people need to get away and chill. And as much as we enjoyed all of that, and enjoyed each other, none of it was the best thing about the trip.

The best thing was lunch on Friday. The food was fine. But that’s not the point. One day on Facebook I said we were in Maui, and a friend named Tom Petersen saw it and posted “we’ll be there on Thursday.” I emailed him and we knew we had to get together. Because Tom Petersen is not just a Facebook friend.

In 1976 Tom hired me, despite my rather thin qualifications, to anchor the weekend sports and report news three nights a week at KWWL TV in Waterloo, Iowa. I worked the second shift as a reporter, and, let’s face it, there’s not a lot going on in Waterloo, Iowa, after dark. Not in 1976 any way. So while I was hanging around the newsroom in the evening, I started fooling with the scripts. Tom was not only the news director, he was also the anchor, and he had stuff to do. And it was just the two of us, a photographer, the weather guy and sports anchor. So when I asked if I could rewrite some things and edit some tapes, he told me to go ahead and see what I could do.

It wasn’t long before I was producing the ten o’clock newscast for him. It was as much fun as I’ve ever had in news. He trusted me. He didn’t even proofread the scripts before he went on air. He said he liked reading through it on the air and figuring out where it was going. So from time to time, I’d try to trip him up. Never could.

Once he told me people had stopped him in the grocery store and quoted a story from the previous night’s newscast to him. You can have the awards; in a world where the words are gone as soon as they are spoken, having them remembered is a high compliment. I still remember the story.

I stopped reporting news and sports and was producing two newscasts a day. It was what I was supposed to be doing. I was a poor excuse for a reporter. But I could write for other people. I write reading better than I read writing. And I had a sense for how to put together a newscast.

Tom made that possible. Somewhere along the line we went from boss and employee to friends. After about three years, he did the unthinkable for a boss. He encouraged me to move on. He got me an interview at a station in Dayton Ohio, and I was offered the job. I was too insecure to take it. Tom let me learn. The next time he arranged an interview for me, I was ready.

He left KWWL for Detroit and when I left shortly thereafter, he flew back just to help me pack. Tom would later go to WGN radio in Chicago where he did morning drive and became news director. When you Google him, the word “legendary” pops up. And he’s in the WGN Walk of Fame. Google doesn’t know that he’s my friend. But I do.

Plain and simple, I wouldn’t have had a career in television news had it not been for Tom Petersen.

I wouldn’t have a nickname either. The first time I turned up in the newsroom, driving into Waterloo with a U-Haul trailer behind my car, he looked up from his desk and said “oh look, it’s Leo Swanberg.” Swanberg didn’t stick, thankfully, but Leo followed me to four more television stations and forty two more years, so far. I am still Leo to my closest friends in broadcasting. It’s what the grandchildren call me. 

Though we’ve stayed in touch, it’s been about 27 years since we’ve seen each other. It was, you might imagine, quite a lunch.