Susan Stamberg once began an interview with an orchestra conductor by asking a question she confessed she'd always wanted to ask someone in his line of work: "Don't your arms get tired?"
Maestro Jorge Mester of the Louisville Orchestra told her, "You know it's the most obvious question and never gets asked." He said his right arm was a little heavy, but added that only unemployed conductors' arms get tired. His stayed in good condition.
Listening to Susan Stamberg reminded us that often the best questions are short, simple, and open-minded. She has been the master of that art.
This week, Susan Stamberg is putting down her microphone after more than 50 years at NPR. She has won shelves of major awards in broadcasting, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — especially extraordinary for someone who became a star on the radio and not on a screen.
And many of us at NPR feel that we are here today because of Susan Stamberg.
She gave personality to a fledgling network that was almost an afterthought in the Public Broadcasting Act.
News voices in the 1970s tended to be somber, accent-less, and almost exclusively male. Susan Stamberg became the first woman ever to anchor a daily national evening news broadcast in the U.S., when she began to co-host All Things Considered in 1972. She was serious as the news required. But she was also curious, relentless, and utterly delightful.
Susan's voice made Americans say: "They sound different, don't they?" Her voice has been sharp, sometimes saucy, and could be silken — then let out a bell-ringing laugh.
She turned, "What is NPR?" into "Have you heard NPR?"
Today, there are women at all ranks and responsibilities in what we now call "media," working as correspondents, anchors, news directors, CEOs and more.
They have entered through a crack that Susan Stamberg helped break through broadcasting's dense male wall.
I heard Susan Stamberg's voice when I was a young reporter in Chicago — and Linda Wertheimer's, and Nina Totenberg's and Cokie Roberts' and Noah Adams' and Bob Edwards' — and I thought: I want to join that merry band. They're telling important stories differently.
Susan Stamberg retires this week, but the sound and work of the place she helped found continues in all who have followed her voice to NPR. Susan has lifted us up for 50 years; and her arms have not grown tired.
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