Producer (30 page)

T
en 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) calls 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 opinion, 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?

Even more important was the question of how to accept my loss. Since my husband had not died, my task was to find forgiveness.
And to find forgiveness, I needed to understand my inner patterns while I was grappling with the idea of real love. I had
a few examples of people in love who had really affected me. Larry and I had had lunch with Nancy Reagan when her husband
was ill but still alive. Larry had looked at Nancy with
great compassion and gently asked her, “Do you ever wish he would just peacefully move on?”

“No,” she said, “because then I wouldn’t be able to kiss him good night.”

Now that was a love to emulate, a role model for the way a husband and wife could be with each other, even in the most difficult
of circumstances. And then there’s Jenny Craig, weight-loss guru and philanthropist. She and her husband, Sid, were like a
second family to me and they had the kind of love affair that dreams are made of. When Sid died in 2008 at the age of seventy-six,
Jenny wrote the following letter and read it at his funeral.