David McCullough Was My Chauffeur by Meg Daley Olmert 

David in Mexico for a show called “Voices of Latin America”

David McCullough was my chauffeur.

For a day.  

In 1986, I got a job at Smithsonian World, the PBS series co-produced by the Smithsonian Institution and WETA. The position was for an assistant to the Executive Producer, Martin Carr and series host, David McCullough.  

Martin, who had produced the CBS’s Peabody and Emmy winning, documentary Hunger in America, hired me—well, his dog Buster did. I had never seen Smithsonian World nor had I read David’s first two books. I  didn’t know who these people were, but Buster seemed to know who I was. He jumped into my lap during the interview and the next I knew, I was hired. Martin, it turned out, was deeply impressed by Buster’s opinion.  And while dogs and I have always been on the same page, I would discover as time went on, Buster was, shall we say, more a Buddha–who never so much as lifted his head again for me or anyone in the office. 

But there I was, an assistant who didn’t know her bosses, the show, or even how spell or type. David never seemed to care. He’d edit my hideous typos with a wink and a smile.

In Season two, we did a show on the Wyeth family. David asked that I accompany him to a film shoot at the Wyeth Museum in Chadds Ford, PA. He didn’t have to do that. It’s not like I had earned a treat, but he did.  And he picked me up in front of my building driving the most godawful, gigantic, “wood-panelled” Oldsmobile station wagon. I wish I could show you the portrait I of took of him—once I stopped laughing–holding open the door for me. He was, as we say in New York, a pisser!

Off we took with him at the wheel—no, I didn’t really drive either. We were yacking and laughing when David said, “Hey—isn’t that the Washington Monument?” We had circled the Beltway twice! Clearly his assistant needed an assistant!

Our wee mistake meant he couldn’t deliver the delicious dinner he promised me, but he did come out of the gas station with Hershey bars.  Neither of us cared at all. We managed to get to the film shoot on time and I was able to watch David weave that tale of family, art, triumph, and catastrophe into the Emmy-winning show it would prove to be. He was the best. 

When David left Smithsonian World to begin work on Truman, I gave him a promo picture taken of him on the White House lawn under the Truman balcony.  I had cut and pasted a metal detector into his hand.  He loved it and later told me it had pride of place in his writing shack on Martha’s Vineyard.  In 2009, with the help of spell check, I published my book Made For Each Other, the Biology of the Human-Animal Bond. David wrote me a beautiful letter saying how much he loved it. I cherish that and my time with this man who could have looked right through me. But, like Buster, he saw me. Everyone will tell you, David was a mensch. I will tell you he was a good dog.   

Meg Daley Olmert is an expert on the biology of the human-animal bond. She is Science Advisor to The Comfort Dog Project in Uganda—the first canine assisted trauma therapy on the continent. She resides with her husband Michael in Whitman.