The Dynamic Deborah Norville
She sews, she authors books, and oh, yes, she's on TV.  

By Mike McLeod

You've seen Deborah Norville in the past on NBC's Today Show and as a substitute anchor on NBC Nightly News and the CBS Evening News. You can see her today on the news-entertainment show Inside Edition. If you've been around Atlanta for quite a while, you may even remember her as a news personality on WAGA Channel 5.

Deborah's road to the big time that ran through Atlanta started in Dalton, Georgia, where she was born in 1958 and grew up. But despite her celebrity status now, her early years were framed by her mother's suffering with rheumatoid arthritis.

Here is my conversation with Deborah Norville.

Your mother suffered for quite a while with RA. What did she go through?

"She had a really tough case of it. She battled it for ten years, ten tough years, and she died from complications from it. There were not nearly as many treatment options for it then as there are now. Every year, for her birthday and Christmas, she wanted a set of new arms and legs because she suffered joint deterioration and the doctors never determined it or did proper x-rays. Her hip joint completely deteriorated. She was in a wheelchair and then in bed and didn't move. She battled sores and had fluid in lungs. She died of pneumonia."

You lost your mother at a young age. How did that affect your family?

"My mother was ten when she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and 20 when she died. More than half my childhood was spent with my mother ill. I can speak from experience that with a critically ill parent, you grow up fast. Half way through my parents' marriage her life ended, leaving my three sisters and me, from 16 to 10 years in age."

Because of your mother's illness, one of your favorite memories is her picking you up after school. That was a big deal because of the sacrifice it required on her part.

"The fact that stands out is because she was feeling good. When she wasn't there, I knew she was having a bad day. I remember it like it was yesterday, how excited I was to see that ugly green Buick station wagon parked there. Back then, the parents who were picking up kids were territorial about their parking spots. They'd stake out spots and had a normal spot. They wouldn't park in your spot."

Despite arthritis ruining her fingers, Deborah's mother still taught her daughter how to sew, knit and crochet. These skills would end up comforting Deborah later in life

Your first job was at the age of 15, but it wasn't on TV.

"My first job was working in a feed and garden center, selling seed corn to farmers and pretending I knew something about gardening. At age 15, I knew nothing about any of it!
I loved to work the adding machine, but I knew nothing about plants. We sold everything there-plants, garden supplies, fertilize, feed, goat chow, even monkey chow to real farmers. It was a great place to work.

"It's so good for kid to have a job and realize how hard it is to work, to take out taxes.
Another job was working for dad. He handed me a broom and told me to sweep out an entire warehouse. It was huge. I ended up with bloody blisters. Then I had to wash down all the filing cabinets and wash them out with Windex, not fun. At the end of the week, he sent me to a farm to mow the grass airstrip. He put me on a tractor in the blazing sun. This was before the days of iPods so I had nothing to listen to. After that, I gave my two weeks notice, and he said, 'Go away.'"

You eventually went on to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism. What was your first TV news job?

"My first was a news job was with Georgia Public Television. It was called, "The Lawmakers." It was seen all over the state every night. This was before C-SPAN and while I was still in college. The show ran through the legislative session. It was quite interesting, like watching paint dry. On the last day of the session, the wife of the guy who ran Channel 5 saw me ask a question of the State Senator from Jessup, Georgia. Something I did impressed her. They brought me in for an interview and offered me a summer job for $75 per week as an intern."

How did you get to New York?

"I worked all summer, worked weekends. I had a foot in both worlds (college and TV news). I got yelled at by my sorority for not coming to socials, but I worked weekends in Atlanta. I worked seven days, with school. I turned down an offer to be a news reporter and instead spent the summer in Europe. I ended up staying in Atlanta and became the weekend anchor with Ken Roberts. This was when the Atlanta child murders happened and Reagan and Carter.

"After that, it seemed like the time to move on, so I moved to Chicago was there for five years. I went from a low reporter to the anchor.

"Then I went on to New York. At 28, I was the only solo woman anchor in network news. This was during the time when the Pan-Am Lockerbie bombing happened. I was at NBC News at Sunrise and then over to news."

Then the Today Show thing happened, and I think you got a bum rap on that.

"After that, I walked away for a while when my baby was born, and then worked in radio and as a reporter on Street Stories with Ed Bradley. I was offered a Sunday night news anchor, but I was pregnant, and I no longer had the right to jaunt around world. I did a story on a woman who hired Delta Force people to kidnap her child back from Tunisia, an island off Sicily. She gave up everything for her kid, and I was leaving mine? I had an epiphany to leave the network. I needed to be a wife and a mother."

You've said that what got you through that difficult time was your family, your faith and your sewing machine.

"Frankly, sometimes it is more of the third. Sewing is a great catharsis for me. I did some paisley indoor/outdoor drapes for our patio. It gives me a great sense of pride, to look at what I made. I'm on a knitting jag now. In January, I will be coming out with my own line of knitting yarns.

"It got me through tough times; it's a good companion, any of the needle arts."

In addition to her work on Inside Edition, Deborah has authored a couple of books for adults (Back On Track-How To Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You A Curve and Thank You Power-Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You) and two for children (I Can Fly and I Don't Want To Sleep Tonight.)

What do you think is the most important thing you've done in your life thus far?

"I've been very lucky. I managed to start my adult life doing the career I was meant to do. I knew from the get-go. Being from the South, we're storytellers. I found a way to tell stories and to get paid telling them. I've had public bumps and private ones. One thing to do is find a way to take the lessons learned from the good times and the bad times and share those lessons in a non-judgmental, uplifting way with people. We're put on the Earth to make a difference. I know I make a difference with my kids and with my books. I may be 50, but I have so many ideas; there is so much for me to do."

What do you plan to do that you have not done yet?

"I come from the Nike school of pronouncement: talk about it and then do it. If you have ten balls in air, three or four will fall, so you have a 60% chance of something happening. I don't know what's next. I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so I want to have own business."

Any qualms now that you've turned 50 (on August 8)?

"No, I did a big birthday party to celebrate it. I shot out an email to friends, and one was horrified: 'You're telling everyone?'

"I feel good, I'm blessed. I want to celebrate with my friends. I heard my daughter's friends say they thought I looked 36-42 years old. Make sure you put that in the article."

You got it.
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You can learn more about Deborah Norville's books and email her at www.dnorville.com   and www.thankyoupower.net.