New book by ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent offers portrait of hope

By Sandra Varner

In “Step Out on Nothing,” veteran news reporter and CBS “60 Minutes” chief national correspondent Byron Pitts chronicles his astonishing story of overcoming a childhood filled with obstacles to achieve enormous success in life. During a difficult childhood — his parents separated when he was 12 and his mother worked two jobs to make ends meet — he suffered from a debilitating stutter. But he had an even more embarrassing secret: Young Byron was also functionally illiterate. For a kid from inner-city Baltimore, these challenges seemed insurmountable.

From those early years in Baltimore to his award-winning work covering 9/11, Iraq and President Barack Obama, Pitts’ exceptional story will resonate with those who struggle with any sort of learning challenge. “Step Out on Nothing” will also serve as a motivating tool for teachers, counselors and social workers.

While in the Bay Area on assignment for “60 Minutes” Pitts sat down with me at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.

Sandra Varner: When we talk about the challenges that you faced early on — illiteracy, a speech impediment and quarreling parents — one can appreciate your courage in spite of these towering obstacles. As a young person, a child, you demonstrated tremendous courage. Do you know where you summoned the audacity to be so persistent at such an early age?

Byron Pitts: I don’t know if I’d even call it courage, just the confidence in my mother’s words. If my momma said we could do it, if we work hard, we pray hard, then we can do it. I believed her. I am a proud momma’s boy … I think it was her courage.

One of the things gives me pause when I think about that time is how scary it was for me, but how scary it had to have been for my mother. When the system and people around her were saying, “You know what Clarice, give up on that boy, you’ve done the best you can, he needs some special things and you can’t provide those, just let him go.”

She had plenty going on in her life where she could have done that and no one would have blamed her. So, just thinking of the courage it took for her to hang in there with me. I mean, I didn’t know any better. I was a little boy and my mother said you’re going to do this, so I did what she said. But for her, who knew the consequences of failure, for her to hang in there with me despite what the experts told her and what the evidence was, I mean, she showed real courage.

If I had any (courage) it came from my mother’s example and just because we are very close. We’re close today, we were very close then and she refused to give up on me. There were moments when I wanted to give up on myself. There is the story I tell about just learning to read when I was in about middle school. I was struggling one night — working on the reading machine that was helping me learn how to read — and we were doing something simple — the alphabet or something not much more complicated than that.

I said, “Mom I’m a moron, I’m this old and I’m working on this and my classmates are reading books and studying history and I’m learning the alphabet.”

She said, “Baby you’re not a moron. Smart people can think their problems away. We got to wrestle ours to the ground.”

Even then — in that difficult moment — she comforted me, she made me laugh because she knew back then that there is a real healing that comes from laughter. So, she was always great in giving me what I needed. I mean, there were moments when she had to kick me in the butt, and she did. There were moments when she had to yell at me, and she did. But, there were more moments when she had to love me past a difficult moment, and she always did.

Sandra Varner: To look at you today, it is hard to line up your past with who you have become: an accomplished and successful journalist, “60 Minutes” correspondent, known the world over. Now that your colleagues and others have been made aware of your past through this book, have their reactions changed toward you?

Byron Pitts: Well, one of the nice things is that people say, “You know Byron, I had a similar experience in my life.” I mean, I’ve talked to colleagues, journalists who were orphaned as children or who had an abusive parent or had a parent who had some sort of addiction to alcohol or to drugs. And, I’ve had colleagues, friends, tough journalists tear up in telling me how my story reminded them of their own story. That’s been nice to have those kinds of human moments with people who I know and respect.

I don’t think anyone thinks anything less of me because they know the story. I think some people seem surprised by the story. I think almost every person I’ve ever talked to feels encouraged by me. Because, in the book, I want to say that all of us have struggles in our lives, and struggle comes by many different names and many different forms, but we all have struggle.

One of the points I want to make in the book is that there is joy on the other side of struggle, and I want to believe that at this stage of my life I’m on the joy side of those childhood struggles. Also, the notion that struggle isn’t all bad, that I also believe that strength only comes from struggle. Whenever I talk to students and I talk to young athletes I say to them, “You know, when you’re lifting weights to grow stronger, basically, you’re tearing the muscle in order to grow it.”

My grandmother had a great saying: “You know you can’t climb a mountain without some rough spots. If a mountain were smooth, you’d have nothing to hold on to.” It’s those difficult moments in life that teach us, that grow us. I am a firm believer that sometimes in life you learn a lot more by losing than you do by winning, so I learned plenty growing up.

Read more at www.Talk2SV.com.

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