Overview
Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions - David Dick experienced all of them in his nineteen years as CBS News correspondent. Assignments also placed him in the path of storms in the U.S. and in a Holy Land torn by unholy strife.
As chief of CBS's South American Bureau from 1978 to 1979, Dick often found himself hampered by bureaucratic strangleholds, but he repeatedly put himself on the line of fire in civil wars sweeping through Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
A horror story erupted in the jungles of Guyana when cult leader Jim Jones ordered the murders of reporters and a U.S. congressman. Jones then directed the mass suicide of over nine hundred followers. David Dick reported for American viewers this sordid crime of human suffering and insanity on the loose.
Another man-made storm struck on a sunny afternoon in a Maryland shopping center when a crazed gunman tried to assassinate George Wallace. Dick's coverage of that event earned him an Emmy.
Personal storms took their toll, as well - a failed marriage and conflicts with CBS News executives who too often preferred "bang-bang" sound bites to the human stories behind the headlines.
Sustaining him were a loving second marriage and a dream of one day finding "peace at the center" in an old house alongside Plum Lick Creek in his native Kentucky. That dream was fulfilled in 1985 when Dick accepted a teaching post at the University of Kentucky and went on to a prominent career as community newspaper publisher, columnist, and author of books that have made him one of Kentucky's most popular writers.
Follow the Storm, based in part on detailed journals maintained through much of David Dick's news career, is a powerful and compelling story of a quest for truth and of a search for the joy to be found in human connections and the love of the earth.