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I’ve written about Hawaii people crossing paths with celebrities a few times this year. Former KGMB news anchor Linda Coble told me she met several presidents, two first ladies and even Oprah Winfrey.
“I was on the Big Island covering a park dedication in Hilo in the early 1970s,” Coble told me last week. “President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, were there, as were hundreds of residents who came out for the event.
“For some reason, the president had to go away to sign some documents. He was gone for an hour. Pat Nixon was looking around, and nobody was paying attention to her. There were no security people by her.
“I looked at her, she looked at me and she gestured with her hands and mouthed, ‘Do you smoke?’
“Yeah, I nodded. She said, ‘When I give you a signal, let’s get under the table. Nobody will see us.’
“So, we ducked under the long luau table with beautiful draping and sat on the ground and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I remember she was very slender with curly hair.
“We chatted about where I came from and what living in the White House was like. She was worried that the president was yanked away without an explanation. I was easing her concerns and lighting her cigarettes.
“Then, the president returned, and we took our positions and the ceremony proceeded.”
Gerald Ford
Following Nixon, Gerald Ford became president. Coble says he came to Hawaii around 1976 for a Dec. 7 event at the USS Arizona Memorial. It was his first major trip out of Washington, D.C., and was a big deal.
“Reporters from around the world were with him,” Coble recalls. “They filled Air Force Two with correspondents, who got off the plane and into a line of 30 cars at Hickam AFB.
“All the local reporters were up in the bleachers watching. They wouldn’t let us in the caravan, which was going to the Arizona Memorial. The local reporters would miss out.
“I went down and found a handsome guy in a uniform and said, ‘Why is it that they get to go and I don’t? I’m local. The president is here in my state and I can’t cover it? That makes no sense.’
“He said, ‘Linda, what car do you want?’ I said, ‘You pick.’ He said, ‘Take 27.’ So, I went under the bleachers, and I tugged on my cameraman’s pants. ‘Leave the tripod, bring the bag. We’re going to sneak into car 27.’
“We got in the car and the caravan drove away. We followed President Ford all around Pearl Harbor. It was great.”
No interviews were allowed, but reporters could take photos and film him.
President Ford had a reputation for being a klutz. A bum knee from his football days at Michigan made him fall down the steps of Air Force One in 1975. Would he trip or bump into something in Hawaii?
The caravan returned to Hickam. The Kamehameha Schools Glee Club was singing on the tarmac, and Ford stopped to mingle with the kids not far from Coble.
“I reached down into my bag to get my microphone so I could record the singing. I stood up right when the president of the United States was walking above me. I still don’t know exactly how it happened.
“I stood up, and my head hit his chin hard. I thought both of our sets of teeth were going to fly out.
“The Secret Service rushed at me, thinking I had tried to attack him. The president and I were laughing, and, of course, I now had my microphone in my hand, so I said, ‘Mr. President, can you share your emotions from this special day at the Arizona Memorial?’
“President Ford spoke very eloquently, considering that I had just smacked him in the jaw. It was a beautiful sound bite. And I was the only one in the world that got it,” she laughs.
“Bob Sevey, my boss, wasn’t laughing, though. I had broken the rules, and he made me share my interview with all the other local TV stations.
“I could hardly move my jaw the next day. The impact was that hard. I don’t know how the president felt after that.”
Jimmy Carter
Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, who served one term and afterward was visiting businessman Chris Hemmeter at his Kahala home.
“Chris called me at the KGMB newsroom and said former President Carter was in town and wanted to talk with me. I had some time between the 6 and 10 p.m. newscast and said, ‘OK, I’ll come over.’ I didn’t have a camera or microphone to record him.
“We sat on the couch. Carter mentioned visiting Schofield Barracks a few years earlier with his wife, Rosalynn.
“We talked about his presidency and he asked for my feedback. I felt he related to me as a person, not a reporter.”
Bill and Hillary Clinton
“Hillary Clinton had spoken to my Rotary Club in 1992,” Coble says, “and she and I had an opportunity to talk for a few minutes, mostly about the prevention of child abuse. She had heard about Hawaii’s Healthy Start program and wanted to know how to further it.”
The local program began in 1985 and became a model for several other states.
At the Kuhio Park Terrace low-income housing project in Kalihi, Clinton learned about the nonprofit Parents and Children Together’s Head Start program.
“I came away with a strong feeling that Hawaii has a model that the rest of the country needs to know more about,” Clinton said.
“There is much that can be learned from Hawaii,” she said, “because of its position as the gateway to the Pacific and its multicultural and multiethnic people.”
Coble continues, “In September 1995, Hillary and Bill Clinton were in Waikiki for a veterans parade down Kalakaua Avenue. I was the emcee. After the parade we went into Fort DeRussy to greet the president and first lady.
“President Clinton shook my hand and thanked me for doing a great job. I looked at Hillary and she was sneering. She didn’t want any women near him. Her arms were crossed. Her look seemed to say, ‘What the heck are you doing with my husband?’
“The next day, it made sense. The news was all about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
“I caught Hillary at two times in her life. The first time, before her husband was elected, and she was doing important work about health care. The second time was after his election when she was suffering from the consequences of infidelity.”
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah came to Hawaii in 1986, just as “The Oprah Winfrey Show” premiered on local TV. Two shows were taped at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, and a bunch of reporters, including Coble, interviewed her.
“The next time I saw Oprah was in the 1990s at a big convention in New Orleans,” Coble recalls. “Oprah was a speaker. Afterward I wanted to say hello to her.
“There were a thousand people there, but I thought, OK, if I were her, where would I go? How could I get to my car and not get caught up in a throng of people?
“I went around the rear of the auditorium, found an escalator way in the back and waited at the bottom. I thought she might choose this path. She did. A few minutes later she came down.
“I told her I just wanted to say hi. Do you remember me from a few years ago?
“She said, ‘You know, I do, because there weren’t that many women on TV in those days. You’re from Hawaii, right?’ Yes.
“We walked from the escalator to the door, just two minutes, holding hands and talking about our careers. It was magical.”
Did you meet someone famous and have a story about it? If so, send me an email.
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Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book contains stories from the past three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.
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