by Wendy Walker
Kevin was ready with a solution. “Tell the people out there that the concert is about to end. Keep the red carpet out front for a while and assure them that Paul will walk down that carpet in fifteen to twenty minutes. Tell them everyone will get their shot.”
In the next moment, in a move reminiscent of the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night, when they spent so much energy ducking their fans, Paul, Heather, and company snuck out the back alley and into a waiting car that shuttled them all away. They left a load of disappointed people out front who eventually wandered home and went to bed.
The next day, I held a luncheon for my out-of-town guests and everyone was still shocked and amazed. A call came in on my cell phone shortly after noon from a CNN reporter. “This is really weird, Wendy,” he said, “but there’s a rumor circulating that Paul McCartney played live music at your private birthday party last night. Is it true?”
“How on earth did you find out?” I asked.
The man at the other end of the phone laughed. “How could we miss it? It’s an international story. It’s on the wires.”
It was true. Reports of the party had shown up in local newspapers in larger cities, and were as far reaching as London and Reykjavik. Eventually, my birthday party was covered in Rolling Stone and People magazine. Now everyone in the world knew I was fifty. But I also got some irate calls from friends. “How could you have Paul McCartney playing at your party and not invite me?”
I passed the buck to Ralph, since he had kept it a secret. I saw the wisdom in that. If he had told me, I probably would have invited so many people from all over the country, they would never have fit into the restaurant. But I have friends who are still taking me to task for leaving them out. And as fate would have it, it was the gift that kept on giving, since Paul and I were destined to meet again, some years later, in August 2007.
It started with a call from Larry right after breakfast one morning. “Wendy,” he said, “you need to call David Saltz right away. He has a great idea for us to go to Vegas. Promise you’ll call. He said it’s huge.”
I’m glad Larry didn’t see me roll my eyes. I considered Vegas to be very ho-hum, and I couldn’t imagine what on earth would make us go there. But there it was again. What seemed like an ordinary and mundane request would become another extraordinary day in my life. When I called David Saltz, a highly successful music producer and friend, as a courtesy to Larry, was I ever excited when he said, “The Beatles are celebrating the one-year anniversary of their hit Cirque du Soleil show Love. If you’re interested, I can get you an exclusive interview with Paul, Ringo, Yoko, and Olivia Harrison before the show.”
“You have to be kidding,” I said.
“I’m dead serious, but you have to set it up right now,” he said.
Were we interested? What do you think? I hung up and started the wheels rolling. Within ten days, we were in Vegas, ready to do an interview before Love started. Just before our show began, I walked into the green room, where Paul and I spotted each other. He gave me a hug and we were both commiserating about our divorces when someone walked in behind us and said in a very familiar voice, “Hey, bloke.” It was Ringo.
Paul smiled at him and said, “Ringo, I’d like you to meet my friend Wendy.”
My friend Wendy. As I shook hands with my other favorite Beatle, I flashed back to my little room that had been wallpapered floor to ceiling with photos of these two rock stars. If someone had told me back then that, one day, Beatle Paul would call me a friend and introduce me to Ringo, I would have said, “Yeah, right!”
EXTRAORDINARY THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT THEM
When I was onstage dancing with Paul McCartney, my childhood idol, I was that little kid again, buying 35-cent magazines and pasting pictures on my wall. I could never have predicted that, much later in my life, I would dance with Paul McCartney on the extraordinary evening when I turned fifty.
I walked into Amaya’s room recently to find that she had removed the pretty pictures and objects of art with which I had decorated her room. In their place, she had plastered the walls of her room with pictures of her favorite rock stars. Just like I had done.
I looked from poster to poster, wondering, Which of these idols will she end up meeting someday when she is older? The truth was that she already had met one of them, since he’s a neighbor and friend. Tom DeLonge, our rock star friend from the group Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves, is Amaya’s version of Paul McCartney. He is my daughter’s inspiration for her love of music. So, if my life went full circle from pictures on the wall to meeting Paul, why couldn’t hers go the same way?
I have to say, I’m grateful that both of my children have a great passion in their lives. For Amaya, it’s music, and her vibrant walls tell the story. Walker, on the other hand, is passionate about his dreams, which he turns into amazing stories after he wakes up. I have roused him in the morning, only to have him say, “Please come back in five minutes so I can finish my dream.” When I come back, he gets out of bed, starts pacing, and says, “Just listen to this before I forget it.” Then he tells me an intricate and amazing story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, each with its individual and fascinating plot. He is now writing chapter 13 of his book of dreams.
The thing is, you never know what’s coming down the path. All you can do is go about your life and when things seem dull and mundane, never give up hope. Since nothing ever stays the same, if things are predictable today, something spectacular is bound to be on its way. The key is in remaining open, having a great attitude, and believing that miraculous things are just around the corner. Because they are.
CHAPTER 16
Everything Happens for a Reason
Ten months after the extraordinary birthday party that my husband threw for me, he and I separated. I’ve been through some pretty tough times in my life, and I can say without hesitation that separating from and divorcing my husband of eleven years was the most difficult thing I have ever done. In fact, it still hurts to this day, although I understand how everything happens for a reason.
During the OJ trial, Larry and I had spent a lot of time on the West Coast. Now it was over and we were settling back in Washington. But in 1997, Larry admitted to me that he missed Los Angeles. He had met Shawn a year prior in LA and she also missed it. They wanted to move, he told me. I was surprised, but as luck would have it, my husband had been suggesting that we move to the West Coast, too, since his business partner lived in San Diego.
Although I was initially leery, the idea began to grow on me. There were several reasons for the move that seemed to make sense. First of all, if Larry was going there, I needed to be near him. There was also the benefit that Ralph could travel a great deal less and be with us more. That would be good for our family since we wanted another child. And then there was the idea of having a real life. While our show aired on the East Coast from 9 to 10 p.m., in the West it was over by 7 p.m. That meant that when the show signed off, I would have a full night ahead of me to be with my daughter or go out with my husband.
But what would Tom Johnson, CNN president, think about this? He had believed in me enough to give me my big break when he touted me for Larry’s producer job. Now, since Larry was instigating the move out West, I was counting on Tom’s faith in me. When he arrived at Ralph’s and my home in McLean, Virginia, where I was about to sign my new contract, I broke it to him.
“There’s good and bad news here, Tom,” I said. “Larry wants to move to California, and so do Ralph and I. That’s the good news. The bad news is that while Larry wants to live in Los Angeles, we want to move near San Diego, about two hours south of LA.”
“What about the set? How is that going to work?” asked Tom, looking distressed.
“You know what, Tom?” I said. “It’ll work the same way it works here in Washington. All we have to do is build the identical set in Los Angeles and one in New York, while we’re at it. Don Hewitt (executive producer of 60 Minutes who has since passed away) cal
ls it the most recognizable set on television. We can build it anywhere.”
Tom did not look confident when he said, “Look Wendy, I really can’t have you doing that. You have to be with Larry.”
“Tom,” I countered, “as far as Larry goes, no matter where I am, I’m on the phone with him and various members of my staff as soon as I get up. I stay on the phone in the grocery store, in the bathroom, the bathtub, at the movies, the doctor’s, and in the car. You name a place, I’m on the phone there. Since my job is to decide who is on the show every day, that’s what drives the show. I can do it from anywhere. And if it doesn’t work,” I assured him, “I’ll be the first person to admit it. You know me well enough by now. Just let me give it a try.”
He believed in me and let us go forward, albeit a bit reluctantly. So, in the fall of 1998, I signed my new contract with CNN while Ralph and I packed up our Virginia home, our daughter, and our four-month-old son, and we moved to the West Coast. We initially rented in La Jolla, a beach town twelve miles north of downtown San Diego, while we were waiting for our house to be built. Five months later, we made a final move to a larger home on the outskirts of San Diego, where I originally had my office in the basement. All was going well with my work. I never had to discuss the move with Tom Johnson again, and soon I had satellite dishes on my roof and fourteen monitors in my office, which I made into a virtual newsroom. I had the computers, the faxes, all the technology that allowed me to talk to Larry while he was on the air.
The drawback was that my home, previously my sanctuary, became a miniversion of CNN, with overhead pages calling me to my desk. To this day, I have a load of computers and complicated phone systems that I can’t get away from, which makes it easy to get cabin fever since I’m stuck in one place all day long. No matter how beautiful my surroundings are. But from the time we decided to move, the benefits outweighed the obstacles and they still do.
Things have a way of turning upside down, however, with no rhyme or reason in sight. I separated from my husband and I was totally devastated. I had watched friends and colleagues get divorced and I was aware that it was extremely painful. I was compassionate, but I never really appreciated how debilitating and soul-shattering a divorce can be until I went through it myself. In some ways, I think it’s harder than a death because you are constantly reminded that the person you loved is still around but not with you anymore.
I thought I had taken enough time deciding to get married, that I would pretty much know what was in store. I recall in 1981 when former President Richard M. Nixon was booked on a CNN weekend news show. It was noon on a Saturday and a group of CNNers were gathered in our original small newsroom in Georgetown. And there stood Richard Nixon, in a corner of the room all alone, in his famous hunched-over Nixon stance. Nobody was approaching him because those big hangdog jowls made his face look like a “I am not a crook” Halloween mask, but I was there expressly to see him. I had brought with me the newspaper clipping of him holding me in my fat coat when I was three. I wanted him to autograph it for me, and I made my way over to him.
“Excuse me, President Nixon,” I said, “my name is Wendy Walker and I’d like to show you something.” I took out the picture and he looked closely at it.
“Where was this taken?” he asked in his odd, slow voice.
“Johnstown, Pennsylvania,” I said. “It was 1956.”
“I did a lot of campaigning in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Let me sign this for you.” He signed his name and wrote, “1956–1981.” When he handed it back to me, he asked, “Are you married?”
“No, sir,” I said, “not yet.”
“I hear there aren’t a lot of good men to go around these days,” he said slowly, “so take your time. Don’t rush into it.”
“I won’t,” I promised him.
I had heeded Richard Nixon’s advice and not rushed into anything, since I was nearly forty when I got married. And so, it was with great disappointment that my husband and I parted in January of 2004. This would be the worst and the best period of my life, as the severe upset of my disintegrating marriage sent me careening into a downward spiral of sadness. Really, it was the saddest I had ever felt. That was the worst part.
The best part was that I entered a new phase that forced me to go deeper inside than ever before, which resulted in a spiritual awakening of sorts. I was about to find out that things happen for a reason, even if you can’t see it at the time.
One of the best things that came out of my marriage was meeting my close friend Mary Heckmann. I still remember my reaction when Ralph called me from work one day and said, “We need to have a business dinner with a fellow from my work, Dick Heckmann, and his wife, Mary.”
I was not thrilled. I imagined a boring, humorless couple coming over whom I would have to entertain after a long day of work, but did I ever have a surprise waiting! The doorbell rang, I walked a bit reluctantly to open the door, and in front of me stood Dick Heckmann and his beautiful wife, Mary, who was smiling warmly.
I found out quickly that night that her extraordinary outer beauty was only a hint of what was inside. And we had a lot in common. Dick and Mary had five children, she was just finishing her PhD in English, and she had a great spirit. We talked incessantly, we became fast friends, and we remain so to this day.
“I saw Wendy as someone who thought outside the box,” recalls Mary, “and I was drawn to her creativity and how much she loved her children. We connected in those areas. When she separated from her husband, she was so distressed, I sometimes came over in the evenings, climbed in bed with her to commiserate, and we would fall asleep. It looked like the life was flowing out of her and I was very concerned.”
I needed some help, that was for sure, when Shawn King told me about a psychic named Char Margolis. I had been open to metaphysics and psychic phenomena for most of my life, and my belief was strengthened by a childhood experience that had haunted me for many years.
Maura, a neighborhood friend, and I grew up together in Dubuque. We were so close, we used to tie a long string between two tin cans and try to talk to each other from our bedrooms. When I was about to come home for summer vacation at the end of my freshman year at Hollins, in 1972, I was so looking forward to spending time with Maura. But I got a shocking phone call from my mother. Maura had gone to an end-of-the-year party at her college, she had gone out on a boat ride with a boy, and neither of them had come back. Maura had drowned at age eighteen.
From then on, I had a recurring dream that I was staring at Maura’s house, which was completely dark except for her reflection in the upstairs window. When I knocked on the front door, I could see her inside but her mother said, “Maura can’t come out of the house.”
The dream continued to haunt me and about ten years later, a friend who lived in India sent me a letter out of the blue that said, “You have to let Maura go. She’s trying to go but she’s still with you.”
How could she know that I was still having my Maura dreams? It was so many years later. I visited a male psychic at the time, who asked me almost immediately, “Do you know someone who drowned?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice unsteady. I had not told him about Maura.
“She needs to leave but she keeps coming to you in your dreams,” he said.
He put his arms around me and began cradling me, rocking me back and forth while he spoke to Maura as if she were standing there. He told her in a gentle, firm voice that it was okay to leave now, that I was letting her go. After that experience, I never had that dream again, and it cemented my spiritual beliefs even more firmly.
Now, in the wake of my divorce, I turned to the spiritual part of my life to find healing and I quickly began to understand the meaning of good and bad energy in the people around me. I sought out people who were not interested in being negative but were there to support me and to help me rebuild myself. My self-esteem had never been so low, and I consider myself really lucky to have met Char who calls herself a psychic intuitive. In my op
inion, she is that and so much more.
I have always relied on my intuition to get me through life’s ups and downs and to make important decisions. I can feel an energy presence when people are around me. My daughter has that gift, too, and I began to view my healing process not so much as spiritual, but rather as science—quantum physics, to be exact. We know that we can transfer energy to others and we know that when we are around people with a great deal of negativity, we begin to feel negative, too. The same is true of positive energy, so after getting two recommendations from people I respected, I went to see Char. I wanted a new and positive perspective on my life and what was happening to me. I wanted to believe that what was happening was more than bad luck. I needed there to be a reason for it and I wanted to find out what it was.
“Wendy had almost no self-esteem when I met her,” says Char. “I could tell right away that she was the kind of woman who was serious about her commitments, and her divorce threw her for a loop. She was in shock when I met her, her sense of humor was gone, and she needed a lot of emotional support.”
I had countless conversations with Char, who encouraged me to take a good long look at myself. She said, “There is an unspoken force that is around us. We all have our own energy thumbprints and our energy is constantly progressing all the time. Quite simply, positive energy attracts more positive energy, just like negative energy attracts more of the same. I’m glad you’ve grown tired of the negativity. And I believe that your children can be instrumental as a motivation to seek out goodness in your life from now on.”
Char basically encouraged me to use my intuition when it came to choosing my friends. “We are all intuitive,” she assured me, “but you have to practice using your intuition. It’s like any other muscle in your body. You need to use it so it doesn’t weaken and disappear.”
When I thought about it, I had been using my intuition all my life. I always had let my instincts guide me, especially in my work where I was required to make decisions all day long that seemed so random. My intuition had never let me down. Why couldn’t I use that same instinctual understanding to choose the people who would be most beneficial to my healing process?
