Author To Return Home For Program At Booth Library—

Lisa Phillips Is Telling Stories

About NPR Storytellers

By Nancy K. Crevier

How does an interviewer interview an interviewer?

“It was nervewracking. It was like conducting Mass for the Pope,” exclaimed Lisa Phillips, author of Public Radio: Behind The Voices, as she discussed her recently published book. “I was about to interview some of the best interviewers in the country.”

Ms Phillips, a 1986 graduate of Newtown High School, will be at C.H. Booth Library on Thursday, May 11, at 7 pm, to share her experiences in collecting the personal stories revealing the lives behind the voices that deliver news and culture to the 27 million National Public Radio listeners across the country.

Ms Phillips lives in Woodstock, N.Y., with her husband and daughter, but still has close ties to this New England town. Her parents, Barbara and Arthur Phillips, live in Newtown and are, according to Ms Phillips, her best publicists. She is presently a journalism and communications instructor at SUNY New Paltz and is a freelance journalist. It is her background in public radio, though, that led her to delve into the private lives of such public personalities.

 “Like a lot of people growing up in a small town, I was kind of restless growing up in Newtown. I couldn’t wait to get on with my life,” said Ms Phillips.

Her restlessness led her to a career in radio, working at six different stations  in five states — including Connecticut — over the years as a radio reporter and host. Her first stint as a news director at KTPR was not so glamorous, said Ms Phillips. For three years, she was the driving force that gently nudged citizens in the Fort Dodge, Iowa, listening area from their slumber, arriving at the station long before the first rays of light had brightened the horizon. It was while she was there, though, that she rubbed elbows at an NPR gathering with one of her own favorite NPR announcers, Terri Gross.

Capturing the lives of over 40 famous radio personalities through personal interviews, intense research and observation took Ms Phillips two years and miles of travel around the country. But meeting popular NPR hosts like Cokie Roberts, Robert Siegel, Renee Montagne, Noah Adams and Susan Stamberg satisfied “a yearning,” said Ms Phillips, “of how we are wanting to meet our heroes.”

Susan Stamberg is referred to by many in the business as the “founding mother” of public radio. Coming face to face with her, said Ms Phillips, was thrilling.

“She was surprisingly easy to interview. She has so much history behind her. I miss her when I’m listening to Fresh Air and Morning Edition. She was the first woman to host a nightly radio broadcast. It has taken 30 years for television to follow with Katie Couric going to CBS.”

She was not always able to personally interview all of her NPR heroes and heroines, though. Not being able to speak in person with Terri Gross for Public Radio: Behind The Voices was particularly disappointing, she said.

“That was a heartbreaker. I think [Terri Gross] is a fairly private person. I asked her on and off for about a year,” Ms Phillips mourned. “I still love her and what she does, but it does make me sad that I couldn’t talk to her.” As with personalities Garrison Keillor and Car Talk hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi, with whom she also was unable to set up live interviews, she was forced to rely upon research and observations from personal appearances to fill out the chapter about Terri Gross.

With so many NPR personalities willing to speak openly with her, why did she feel compelled to include those who were not able to avail themselves to her?

“They are some of the biggest people in public broadcasting,” she explained. “I had to write about them.”

As intimidating as it was initially to put pen to paper about these big-name radio personalities, Ms Phillips sensed that each one knew what she wanted.

“I wanted good stories. Whatever they sensed of my timidity probably helped draw them out. Also, I don’t know how much they get to talk about their lives.” As she pointed out, the job of an NPR announcer is to deliver the news and information in that distinctive NPR cadence with very little personal editorializing. To have these famous radio personalities find her book proposal intriguing and for them to be willing to open up to her was exciting for Ms Phillips, and she looks forward to sharing her experiences with Newtown residents at the May 11 book talk.

“I actually worked at the [C.H. Booth] library when I was 15, so it is great to be able to come back to the library. I was a huge reader. I would go into the stacks and read when it was quiet,” said Ms Phillips. “Being able to do this book reading has made me think about what Newtown has given me. There are people and places in town that have really helped to shape me.”

Among those to whom Ms Phillips is indebted, is the late Don Jackson, a long-time friend of her family.

“He actually helped me to write the proposal [for Public Radio: Behind The Voices]. He would give me advice and he told me a lot about how freelancing is done,” she said. “I felt so badly that he wasn’t mentioned in the acknowledgments for my book.”

As a young writer, she said, Bob and Linda Cox of Newtown helped her with her stories and the teachers who influenced her writing range from her third grade teacher, Caroline Stokes, to high school teachers Mary Wilson and Bill Manfredonia. “I got a good education in Newtown,” she recalled.

“I’m feeling this renewed connection to Newtown,” said Ms Phillips about her upcoming book talk at Booth Library. “I’m pretty excited. It’s great to see things come together like this.