by Bret Baier
Some pain medication and twenty-four stiches later, Mom was starting to feel a little better about things. In the meantime, hearing about the incident, Amy and her folks rushed to be with us in the emergency room. I eventually walked my mom out of the ER and into the waiting room where everyone was gathered. With bandages all over her head, my mother, of course, immediately apologized to Amy’s folks for the way she looked.
Not exactly how I planned on meeting Amy’s family for the first time, either, but there we were in the Naples Community Hospital ER making all the family introductions as if we were in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton. Little did we know that before too much time had passed, both our families would be spending more time together in hospital waiting rooms than we could ever imagine.
The year 2003 was shaping up to be a huge news year in Washington, so I knew I was going to have to be extremely creative and resourceful in my efforts to visit Amy in Chicago as much as possible. With the war in Afghanistan continuing, March 2003 brought the invasion of Iraq. The United States military took Baghdad in relatively short order, and it wasn’t long before I found myself traveling with Secretary Rumsfeld on his first trip to the region.
It was a big trip, and it seemed like every reporter who had ever stepped foot in the Pentagon wanted in. After we landed, Secretary Rumsfeld and his staff were put in armored Humvees for the trip into Baghdad. Meanwhile, all the traveling reporters were herded onto a big bus that would trail behind the secretary’s caravan. Inexplicably to me, the one, singular, defining characteristic of the press bus they had for us was that it seemed to be made entirely of glass. I mean glass glass. Not any of that multilayered, high-tech, bulletproof stuff, either. Perfect for getting a good view riding into Baghdad, but perhaps not the safest vehicle for a war zone.
There we were, just a few days after U.S. troops took Baghdad, and it was as if someone in the DOD press shop came up with the brilliant idea that this might be the perfect opportunity for an American Journalists on Parade float that could be seen for miles around as if we were practicing for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We were so visible—and vulnerable—from a distance I was convinced we looked like we were in a giant goldfish bowl on wheels headed straight down the airport road for the Baghdad aquarium.
Before we departed, a young Army captain on the bus mumbled something about helmets and flak jackets being in the back for anyone who wanted them. I don’t know if we didn’t hear him clearly, if he didn’t like the press, or if it was simply war-zone machismo, but not one reporter on the bus went for a helmet or a flak jacket.
Despite being in the middle of a war zone, the reporters on the bus were all in pretty high spirits, and everyone was busting each other out over one thing or another. Soon I could hear some crackling on the radio up near the front of the bus. It was very difficult to make out exactly what was being said, but I clearly heard the words “Humvee,” “shots,” and “SECDEF.”
None of my colleagues on the bus seemed to notice or care what I was hearing on the radio. Finally, I spoke up and asked the driver if, indeed, I heard correctly that one of Secretary Rumsfeld’s Humvees had been shot at.
“Yes,” the driver answered nonchalantly. “The Secretary’s Humvee took a few bullets.”
Immediately, everyone—and I mean everyone—in that floating fishbowl, veteran and rookie alike, jumped out of their seats and dove toward the previously ignored pile of helmets and flak jackets in the rear of the bus.
By the time we arrived at Baghdad’s Green Zone, all the reporters on that bus were more than ready to jump out of the goldfish tank and into the nearest restroom to compose themselves.
It was during this same trip that I started bonding with some of my fellow defense reporters who worked for other networks. Despite the intense day-to-day competition that takes place among reporters covering the same beat, there always seems to be plenty of camaraderie to balance things, especially on overseas trips when you are stuck on planes or hanging in the same hotel lobbies for hours. Covering Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on this trip to Iraq was no exception.
Being fairly new to the Pentagon beat I found myself increasingly hanging around two long-time defense correspondents, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Jack McWethy of ABC. Jack was a fellow graduate of DePauw University, so he sort of took it upon himself to show me the ropes when I first arrived at the Pentagon. Both great guys and fantastic reporters, one of the things we all had in common was our love of golf.
During this particular trip to Iraq, we had a one-day stopover in Doha, Qatar. Being inveterate golfers and always looking for new courses to play during our downtime in Doha, Jack, Jim, and I decided to try to play a round at the course where they hold the Doha Masters, a huge event in that part of the world.
Knowing our very tight schedule covering the defense secretary, the folks at the course couldn’t have been nicer. They got us fixed up with some clubs and a cart for a quick round of golf on this spectacular spring day. Everything was going great. Fantastic weather. Fun conversation. Some serious male bonding going on, and just a wonderful time hanging with these veteran reporters I had admired from afar for so many years.
Once on the eighth hole of the course, however, I received a phone call from my producer telling me that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided to hold an unscheduled news conference in his hotel in forty-five minutes. If we dropped everything and hustled we would be able to make it in just enough time to get to the briefing.
The call ended and I said, “Guys, we gotta go.”
Quite indignant, both Jim and Jack looked at me like I was absolutely crazy, insisting we finish our eighteen holes at this once-in-lifetime world-class golf course.
“Secretary Rumsfeld is having a press conference. We have to go,” I insisted.
Jack and Jim were equally insistent that Rumsfeld would say nothing of news value and our time would be much better spent continuing our game. My companions might have been legends in the news business, but I was just this brand-new beat reporter still trying to find my way. I didn’t exactly have any laurels to speak of, let alone anything to fall back on when I told my bosses I decided to play a round of golf instead of attending a news conference with the one man on the planet they happened to be paying me to cover.
“You guys can finish the round, but I have to go,” I said, with some amount of authority.
Jack and Jim reluctantly decided to leave with me. We raced to get to the hotel in time for the news conference. Jack and Jim were both convinced Secretary Rumsfeld would make zero news that day, but I had my marching orders. The trip from the course to the hotel was filled with world-class moaning by these legendary reporters who were fully convinced the briefing would be a complete waste of time.
With just a minute to spare, we arrived at the hotel where the press briefing was being held. Secretary Rumsfeld came out and proceeded to take a sum total of three questions. And, of course, he made no news at all.
We dutifully pressed Rumsfeld on a couple of issues, but he said absolutely nothing of news value, and the session ended as quickly as it began.
After the news conference was over, Jack and Jim quickly descended on me with some very condescending looks.
“We could have been on the fourteenth hole by now,” Jim said.
I heard about that episode the entire rest of the trip, not to mention during a very long plane ride back home to the United States.
After being back in Washington for a few weeks, I continued to plot all kinds of new ways to impress Amy and convince her I was the guy for her. As we approached May and Amy’s birthday on the seventh, it hit me. I had been invited by General Richard Myers to attend a dinner in Washington for the incoming NATO defense ministers and top military generals. Seven Central and Eastern European countries had been accepted into NATO, and the general was throwing a fancy dinner for them at Washington’s Russia House. Only one of two reporters invited to attend the event, I was told I could bring a guest.
“Perfect!” I thought.<
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I could fly Amy into town, wow her with this impressive Washington dinner, and then whisk her out on the town for a big birthday celebration to finish the evening. In the meantime, I would be able to seed my contact list with names and numbers of the defense ministers and all the top brass from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. This was going to be great; how could this not impress Amy?
Having emptied the Silver Bullet of every last article of clothing remaining from the dirty laundry episode, I picked Amy up at Reagan National and we drove directly to the dinner. Amy looked stunning!
Wearing a beautiful red dress and gold evening shoes that took her to new heights, Amy was about a quarter inch above me at five feet eleven. Despite the height difference, everything about this evening was going to be perfect. I escorted Amy into Russia House, where Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Myers and his wife, Mary Jo, greeted us at the front door. I introduced Amy to them, and I could see she was duly impressed. I thought to myself, “Everything is going according to plan.”
After greeting General and Mrs. Myers, Amy and I proceeded to a small table where a smartly uniformed woman officer gave us our seating assignments. The officer picked up two small envelopes and said, “Mr. Baier, you’re at the chairman’s table, table one. And Ms. Hills, you are with the defense minister of Estonia, at table number eight.”
Amy looked horrified. I turned to the officer and said, “I’m sorry, there must be some kind of mistake. We should be together at the same table.”
The officer calmly and kindly said, “No sir. All couples are split up. The chairman likes the interaction this way.”
Not only could I see the apprehension on Amy’s face, I saw my perfectly planned “seal the deal” dinner date going up in smoke. I had brought Amy to this fancy dinner with the incoming members of NATO thinking we would be sitting together. I hadn’t briefed her on anything.
It was a little too late for me to come up with a briefing paper filled with bullet points of witty and humorous things to drop in during a two-hour dinner conversation about Estonian defense capabilities. I was subjecting Amy to the defense minister and all the military brass from Estonia, a country that ninety-nine percent of the brilliant people in Washington wouldn’t be able to find on a wall map even if they had Alex Trebek standing next to them holding a laser pointer. Images of my life passed before my eyes as I envisioned Amy having to sit through two hours of broken-English diatribes on the threat from Iran, strong-armed Russian energy policy, and specifics about Estonian troop movements in Afghanistan—all on her birthday, no less.
“Wow, did I really screw this up,” I mumbled to myself.
After General Myers offered an opening toast to the new members of NATO, the dinner was underway. While I did my best to make smart and “fair and balanced” dinner conversation at the chairman’s table, the entire time I was glancing over my shoulder to table number eight. Oddly, every time I sneaked a peak across the room toward Amy, I could see everyone at her table was laughing, giggling, even guffawing. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I excused myself to use the restroom, strategically swinging by Amy’s table on the way.
I introduced myself to the Estonian defense minister and the other brass at the table. In a very thick Estonian accent, the defense minister said, “Your girlfriend is beautiful and very entertaining. We are having wonderful time!”
I said thank you, then leaned in and whispered in Amy’s ear, “Are you okay? What in the world are you all talking and laughing about?”
Amy whispered back, “They started out asking me what I thought about Russia joining NATO, and I said I hadn’t formed my thoughts on that yet. Amy said every time they asked her a specific political or military question, she simply turned it around on them and steered the conversation to areas she was comfortable with: Broadway, fashion, travel, television shows. Anything other than Estonian politics, defense capabilities, or the million other topics I feared she would be pressed about during the entire dinner.
“They’re very nice,” Amy said, as if she were talking about some long-lost uncles she was having a beer with at Gibsons Steakhouse in Chicago. Amy Hills from Chicago was just fine—Thank you very much!—hobnobbing with all these VIPs and military brass from Estonia after I provided her with zero advance notice.
I already knew Amy was the one for me, exceeding all the categories on any checklist I had ever come up with. But there she was, owning the table at this high level, diplomatic affair deep in the trenches of Washington, D.C., and she seemed to be having the time of her life. There wasn’t even a checklist category for how she handled herself that night.
As the dinner wrapped up, I leaned over and asked General Myers and his deputy, Marine General Peter Pace, for a favor. As we were getting ready to leave and Amy said good-byes to her new friends from Estonia, with all eyes in the room on them, General Myers and General Pace marched over to where Amy and I were standing. Suddenly, two of the top military leaders in the country started singing “Happy Birthday” to Amy. It was a perfect ending to a dinner that had all the makings of being a hall-of-fame, relationship-ending disaster date.
With Operation Dirty Laundry and the Estonian Disaster Date now growing smaller in the rearview mirror, it wasn’t long before Amy and I started talking seriously about getting married. As in other areas of her life, Amy knew exactly what she wanted when it came to a ring. So, secretly, I started to hunt it down for her.
By late fall, I could sense Amy was waiting for me to pop the big question. We took a trip to the Bahamas for a getaway weekend and had a blast. At dinner the first night, Amy busted out a sexy black dress and was also carrying a camera. Throughout the meal, she was staring at me and smiling with these expectant, adoring eyes. I thought, “Uh-oh. She thinks this is it.”
Finally, after some long walks, romantic sunsets, those puppy dog eyes, and always with the camera, I told Amy, “Honey, I’m sorry. This is not the engagement.” From that moment forward, the mood of the weekend changed dramatically and that camera never made it to another meal.
* * *
About a month after the Bahamas trip, my mom and brother were again in Naples, along with the entire Hills clan: Amy’s parents, Paul and Barbie Hills, her older brother, Tom, and his wife, Darby, her twin brother, Danny, and her little brother, John Paul, known as J.P. I decided I would take everyone out to dinner two nights before Thanksgiving.
During the day, Amy and I walked by a jewelry store on the way to play tennis with her family. I looked in the window and said, “Babe, that sure is a pretty ring there. What is your ring size again? I really need to get that right.”
Red with anger, Amy turned to me and hollered, “You don’t know my ring size after all this time? It’s five and three quarters!”
The tennis match that followed was intense. Amy definitely had a little something extra on her backhand whenever she sent a ball sailing my way.
That evening we all went to the Grill at the Ritz-Carlton for dinner. During the meal, I excused myself from the table to take some phone calls from work. After dinner, the family went to the bar, where a band was playing and a few dozen people were out on the dance floor. Everyone in our group ordered drinks, and I looked at my phone and turned to Amy and said, “Sorry, babe, I’ll be right back. Another work call.”
By this time, Amy had a face similar to the one she’d had on the tennis court earlier in the day. After I left, Amy turned to her mom and said, “Bret totally blew it! He could have asked me right here with all of our family. This stinks!” All of a sudden, in the middle of Amy’s meltdown, and me now away from the table, the band stopped playing and the lead singer said, “We have a special guest who would like to say a few words. Let’s welcome Mr. Bret Baier!”
From behind the curtain just off the dance floor, I popped out wearing a tuxedo and took the microphone. I could see Amy was in complete shock.
“I’d like to ask the love of my life, Amy Hills, to
come up to the dance floor, please,” I said.
A spotlight found Amy at her seat and followed her as she made her way to the center of the dance floor where I was standing.
“Only a few hours after I met you, I knew I wanted to marry you, and over the past year I have grown to love you more every day. You are everything I have ever wanted. You’re my best friend, my soul mate, my love.”
Pulling out the ring, I got down on one knee in the middle of that dance floor, and with the spotlight still shining, I said: “Amy Hills, will you marry me?”
Amy had her hands on her face, and with tears streaming she replied, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
On cue, the band started playing what Amy and I had already decided was our song, “When You Say Nothing at All,” by Allison Krauss. Amy kissed me as we danced and said, “I told my Mom you blew it. I guess I was wrong.”
The rest of the family joined us on the dance floor for several more songs, and that celebration pretty much continued all the way to our wedding day in Chicago in October 2004. Almost two years to the day from our blind date at the Rolling Stones concert, Amy and I were married. Although we couldn’t book the Stones for our reception, the wedding was everything Amy had ever envisioned. She looked like a princess. Seeing her come down the aisle, I had to take several deep breaths so I could keep it all together.
It was a big day for me for many reasons. I had been estranged from my father for a very long time after my parents divorced. So, with the rest of the family gathered for the big occasion, Amy and I were happy my dad was there to help us celebrate as we began our new life together.
Because of our D.C.-Chicago-Afghanistan-Iraq long-distance relationship, our eight-day honeymoon on the Island of Hawaii was the most days we had ever spent together consecutively. During long walks on the beach we tried to predict where the big problem areas might be in the Baier-Hills cohabitation department.
“You put your toothbrush where?”
“You need all that time to get ready?”
