by Bret Baier
No matter where you happened to be on the political spectrum, the election of Illinois senator Barack Obama as the nation’s first-ever African American president was a moment to remember. The fact that an African American was going to stand on the steps of the slave-built Capitol, left hand on the Bible and his right raised to take the presidential oath—now that was going to be a true American moment. Like I said—what a year to have a front-row seat!
Apart from all the political news of 2008, what an amazing, life-affirming, and perspective-altering year it had been for Amy and me! Watching our courageous son triumphantly emerge from his surgeries and hospitalizations over the past year not only deepened us as individuals but also forced us to start rethinking our priorities.
It’s funny in a way. Before Paulie was born, Amy and I would take our evening walks around Georgetown and talk about our hopes and dreams for the future, our family, how many children we wanted to have, how we wanted to make a difference with our lives, and all the other things excited young couples talk about as they start to carve their path.
On one particular evening walk just a few weeks before Paulie was born, we were discussing specific charities we might want to be involved with in the D.C. area. With its politicians, VIPs, and movers and shakers of all stripes, Washington is a very social town with multiple black-tie charity events that one can go to pretty much every night of the week. Apart from the impracticality of attending events every night, and despite the worthiness of so many of the causes, Amy and I talked a lot about which organizations we might devote ourselves to so we could make a difference beyond simply attending black-tie fund-raisers, as important as they are.
Amy and I grew up in families in which giving back and paying it forward were high on the priority list. Both of our families believed strongly in the words of Jesus, “To whom much is given, of him will much be required.” Even before Paulie came along, Amy and I considered ourselves to be extremely blessed people, especially being born in the country we were born in and that God had placed us in the families he did. From a young age we were both taught that charity, generosity, and looking after those who need a helping hand is the secret to living a meaningful and virtuous life.
Amy’s father, Paul Francis Hills, a very successful businessman in Chicago, and her mother, Barbie Hills, are off the charts when it comes to philanthropy and generosity, and they infused Amy with that same spirit of giving. When we were young boys growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, my mother used to take my brother and me to downtown soup kitchens so we would have a firsthand lesson in the truth that “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” From the earliest days of our relationship, Amy and I connected on being concerned about others and giving back to the community, and we wanted to continue to build on this tradition in our own family.
In addition to the great influence of families, friends, churches, and communities, I have often been struck by the role that unscripted—even nondescript—conversations, encounters, or experiences can play in helping shape the direction one’s life might eventually take. It might start out as something quite small, even seemingly insignificant: a quick conversation at a gas pump with a complete stranger, something you see on a billboard, a lyric from a song, a homily at church, or any one of the thousands of other chance encounters we have during our lifetimes.
No matter how it happens, something from that experience or encounter, perhaps unnoticed at the time, takes root in your heart and mind and begins to grow. Then, in due season, before you even know it, that original and seemingly insignificant seed has miraculously blossomed to the point where it becomes a major part of your life. I can identify a few of those unscripted moments, those planted seeds, in my own life that took root and started to give me a vision for how I might one day make a difference for good in this world.
One was on Thanksgiving Day in 1994.
Just two years out of college, I was living in Washington, D.C., tending bar, looking for a job in television, and dreaming of the day when I might make my mark in journalism. My mother had come to visit me during the holidays, and instead of having our own Thanksgiving dinner or going out to a fancy restaurant, we decided to spend the day volunteering at a local soup kitchen.
When we arrived at the soup kitchen early in the morning, we quickly discovered that the operation, as good-hearted as it was, was completely disorganized. To help out a bit and improve the situation, I informally started organizing some of the other lost volunteers who were there to help but were being given no guidance of any kind.
I looked around the room and started suggesting to folks what they might do to help: “Why don’t you do the pies? How about peas and carrots for you? You wanna do the turkey?”
Nobody gave me any kind of authority. I just decided to fill the leadership void of the moment until someone else showed up to take over. My mom and I were just like everyone else at the soup kitchen, simply wanting to volunteer and give back on this great day of thanks. But with no one around to tell us what to do, we just started doing.
The plan for the day, apparently, was to get all this food organized, cooked, packed up, and driven a few blocks away to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, where it would be served on folding tables to whomever showed up and needed a meal. As more and more volunteers started arriving at the soup kitchen, folks started coming up to me and asking, “What do you want me to do?” It wasn’t long before even the guy in charge of the soup kitchen that day was asking me what I wanted him to do.
Eventually I took a roll call of all the volunteers to see who had transportation so we could come up with a plan to transport the food up to the Capitol in time for the promised noontime meal. Soon, all the volunteers, including my mom and me, found ourselves on the Capitol lawn serving Thanksgiving dinner to a very long line of some very grateful folks happy to have a hot meal on this day of thanks.
As I was standing at one of the tables serving up turkey and my mom was down the line on the peas, I looked up and saw that several local TV crews had arrived to do a story on all these folks being fed at the Capitol. Soon, one of the volunteers tapped me on the shoulder and told me “they”—the TV people—“want to talk to the person in charge”: me!
No one else really wanted to do it, so over the next thirty minutes I did several television interviews for the local stations, explaining what was going on right there in the shadow of the glorious dome of the Capitol.
It wasn’t exactly like I was looking for any kind of fame or fortune when I woke up that morning. Mom and I simply wanted to do something—anything—on the spur of the moment to volunteer and give back on Thanksgiving Day.
I had to laugh. I couldn’t get my foot in the door at any of the television stations that were now interviewing me and putting me on their evening newscasts. But there I was, part-time bartender/aspiring television reporter Bret Baier, being interviewed by the top stations in the D.C. market. I wound up on the news in Washington after all. Later in the evening, when we returned home, my roommates were absolutely amazed: “What happened? We thought you were going up there to volunteer and hand out turkey to some homeless people. We’ve been watching you on TV all afternoon doing interviews like you were the mayor or something!”
That experience got me thinking not only about leadership, or sometimes the lack of it, but also that sometimes the dividing line between success and failure for a project is simply one person stepping in to fill the gap and putting themselves in the uncomfortable position of speaking up or even taking charge, if that is required. Without my mother’s influence in my life, I doubt I would have ever suggested volunteering that day, let alone assumed any kind of leadership role to get those people fed. But once my mother and I were there, we were on the job and we were all in.
Another one of those unscripted moments that had a big effect on me over the years came during my first full year in Washington. Early in 2002, after I had only been in town for a few months and was covering the Pentagon, if I had any kind of ha
ngout at all it was Cafe Milano, an upscale restaurant and bar in Georgetown. It was and still is a great place to meet with sources, make new contacts, and generally pick up on the political buzz of the town.
I was a young reporter looking to meet folks, make connections, and learn all I could about the politics of the town, the Pentagon, defense spending, and anything else I could pick up along the way. Lots of movers and shakers hung out at Cafe Milano, and being the new kid in town, I figured it was going to be my place, too.
One night there I happened to meet a guy named Joe Robert. Being new in town I really didn’t know much about Joe, but he was a Fox watcher and knew I covered the Pentagon for the network. Joe and I started having really interesting discussions about Afghanistan, Iraq, foreign affairs, and any number of other topics in the news during those days.
This was before I met Amy and when the idea of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein was just that—an idea. Joe wasn’t sold on the Bush administration’s view on weapons of mass destruction as it related to Iraq or the need to go after Saddam Hussein as part of the overall war on terror. Being a pragmatist, Joe also had serious concerns that we could keep the heat on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and go after Saddam Hussein at the same time. Joe was incredibly interested in foreign policy, but his real interest in Iraq was much more personal in nature. He was the father of a marine who would likely go to Iraq if we invaded. One night Joe told me: “I really don’t want my son to go, but if he does, I’m going to support him a thousand percent. I may even go over there, too, sometime.”
Working at the Pentagon for Fox, I traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq twenty-three times between 2001 and 2007, but I had never heard of a father going over to visit his son in the middle of a war zone. But sure enough, after the invasion of Iraq, Joe, indeed, made good on his promise to visit his son. I have no idea how he pulled that off, but he did. Not long after, despite his misgivings about us being in Iraq in the first place, Joe helped organize a benefit concert at Camp Pendleton, California, for the troops: Kiss, Ted Nugent, Destiny’s Child, and Godsmack were just a few of the big acts Joe recruited to perform. Joe was one of those guys who really knew how to pull strings and get things done.
When I first met Joe I didn’t know much about him, but over time I learned he was a very successful businessman who had made hundreds of millions of dollars in financial services and real estate, a true American rags-to-riches story. Despite growing up very poor, as a young boy Joe had a real knack for earning money: selling newspapers, Christmas trees, applesauce, and bacon door-to-door and working in various restaurants around town.
Once as a schoolboy Joe found some boxing equipment that had been thrown away, and he used it to organize neighborhood boxing matches in his backyard, charging a fee and selling concessions. Talk about planted seeds. Later, when he had become a big success, Joe used his backyard-boxing idea as the basis for creating an annual Fight Night event in D.C. that has raised tens of millions of dollars over the years for numerous charities around town.
Joe’s life was a book, a feature film, a documentary, and a graduate level course in business all rolled into one. Despite all his wealth, success, and intense interest in American politics and foreign policy, Joe and I eventually connected on a whole other level. After Paulie was born and we learned he had to have open-heart surgery, the operation was performed in the Joe Robert Surgical Center at Children’s National Medical Center. The surgical center had been named for Joe after he made a sizable financial contribution to the hospital.
In 2000, Joe’s son was at Children’s to have surgery on his ribs, and Joe wound up sleeping on the floor to be right by his son’s bed. With all the noise and general discomfort of the situation, Joe had a very bad night. But Joe being Joe, he figured he was in a position to do something about it, so he did. That’s the thing about Joe; he didn’t just complain about stuff. If he was in a position to change things, he put his money where his mouth was. Joe was one of those people who knew how to go all in and make a difference for good.
In 2007, after he learned my son was in Children’s for his first surgery, Joe and I reconnected, and he became a great source of personal strength and a wonderful example to me in the area of giving back and going all in to help people. My relationship with Joe had pretty much started as one of those unscripted encounters at Cafe Milano back when I first arrived in town.
Perhaps the most significant unscripted moment having to do with life priorities and making a difference was also the shortest. It was the night of June 30, 2007, just one day after Paulie was born and within the first hour of our family sojourn at Children’s National Medical Center. I was standing with Amy’s father, Paul Hills, at the bank of elevators as we made our way to one-day-old Paulie who had just been transferred to Children’s Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. Waiting for the elevator, we were both emotionally spent. Big Paul turned to me and said, “In one way, Bret, you are very fortunate. You have found your cause. This is why people fill up all those ballrooms on Saturday night. Why guys wear tuxedos they don’t want to wear and the women get all dressed up and buy auction items they don’t really need. As good-hearted and generous as they are, in many cases those folks are supporting causes they know very little about. From now on, you will never be that person. You have your cause.”
Paul Hills was right. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the seed of an idea he planted in me during that one-minute conversation at those elevators took root and grew in me over the first year of Paulie’s life.
For Amy and me, raising and nurturing our son was obviously number one in our lives. Beyond that, if we could do anything for the folks who gave us our son back, we were going to do it. Children’s National Medical Center had been a blessing in our lives and gave us a second chance with our precious son. Almost as important, they gave us hope. If Amy and I could do something—anything—to help Children’s offer that same kind of hope to other parents facing similar circumstances, we were all in. And God willing, when he got older, medical challenges or not, we hoped and prayed that Paulie would be standing there side by side with us, thankful for all the blessings in this life and for life itself.
Totally above and beyond any career achievements in television or journalism, if one day I was able to look up and see my son living his life to the fullest with joy and gratefulness in his heart and a spirit of helping others around him, I would count my own life a success.
* * *
Apart from the big news on the American political scene, as the year 2008 drew to a close there were also a few news items right there in the Fox D.C. bureau. I learned that my mentor and friend Brit Hume decided to step away from the Special Report anchor desk, and Roger Ailes wanted me to take his place. Given that no one in journalism could ever take Brit Hume’s place, I was incredibly humbled by the opportunity I was being offered and the trust that Roger placed in me in asking me to take the helm of the network’s flagship political show. I had no idea how things were going to turn out, but I committed myself to doing everything in my power to make sure Special Report was as crisp and relevant as it was the entire time Brit was at the helm.
We celebrated the start of 2009 with a trip to Naples, Florida, giving me a little time to decompress, catch my breath and reflect on everything the Baier family had experienced over the past year.
Looking back, I had to admit it seemed like a tumultuous, multicolored blur.
Somehow, through faith, prayer, and the loving support of our family and friends, we had emerged from the storm—a little banged up and scarred, perhaps, but far from broken.
Being in Florida also gave me time to consider the new opportunities and responsibilities Amy and I had been entrusted with both on the job and at home as we raised our precious son who we truly considered a miracle and gift from God.
As the celebration of the New Year began to subside and the echo of the fireworks faded, I could hear the strains of a still, small voice deep within.
/> At first it was nothing by a faint whisper, but eventually the familiar words grew loud, strong and clean, and I hoped I was ready for the challenge.
“To whom much is given, of him will much be required.”
Chapter Ten
Special Heart
“Hey, Daddy, I called to say happy birthday to you. I hope you have a nice meeting with the doctor and he will help you, and I hope you have a nice time doing it. Your family is at home, and I hope you have a nicer birthday than anybody. You are the best dad in the whole entire universe, and I love you more than anything, and you are the best dad. I love you more than anything.”
Not since the phone call from President Bush during Paulie’s first surgery in the summer of 2007 have I been happier about missing a call and letting the message go directly to voice mail. It was August 2013, and I was at the doctor’s office for a checkup when six-year-old Paulie called me to wish me happy birthday.
Paulie was becoming such a mature little man these days.
All grown up, he was helping his mom and dad around the house, watching after his little brother, Daniel, and of course borrowing Amy’s cell phone from time to time to make important phone calls. Paulie’s intuition and growing maturity no doubt tipped him off to the fact that he was competing with a former leader of the free world in the category of electronic family keepsakes. Thirty seconds after leaving his first message, Paulie felt compelled to call back to make sure there was absolutely no confusion about who it was who placed the original call: “Hey, Daddy, this is Paul. I wanted to tell you that other message was from your son Paul, and I love you, and you are the best dad and you are awesome. You are so awesome. You’re awesomer than any dad. You are nicer than any dad, and we’re going to have a nice family time on your birthday, and I hope we have a nice vacation. Bye, Daddy.”
