STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: A category on "Jeopardy!" a few years ago was public radio pioneers. The answer - this founding mother of NPR became the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program. The question - who is Susan Stamberg?
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SUSAN STAMBERG: Good evening from National Public Radio in Washington. I'm Susan Stamberg.
BOB EDWARDS: And I'm Bob Edwards with All Things Considered.
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INSKEEP: As heard there in the 1970s. Mrs. Stamberg is retiring after more than 50 years at NPR. For much of that time, she was a program host. As broadcasters say, she was the person in the chair. She has been with NPR so long, she remembers when there was no chair. She was hired before the new company headquarters had furniture.
STAMBERG: In that first week, we sat on the floor, listening to various tapes and reports and talking about what worked, what didn't, what we ought to sound like. We felt we were pioneers, trying to create a new golden age for radio.
INSKEEP: Eventually, they got chairs and started All Things Considered in 1971. Susan grew up in New York, on the Upper West Side, and she later said it took her a while to learn that the entire world was not Jewish. As an adult, she helped to create a forum where she and others called out to talk with every kind of person.
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STAMBERG: Is this Mayor Wallace Maxwell in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania?
WALLACE MAXWELL: That is right.
STAMBERG: Mr. Mayor, why am I calling you today?
MAXWELL: It's the anniversary of the Rain Day on July the 29th.
STAMBERG: Every year, on the 29th of July, it rains in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania?
MAXWELL: Better than 90% of the time.
STAMBERG: Is it raining today?
MAXWELL: It has rained twice already today.
INSKEEP: Susan asked simple but revealing questions. She asked an astronaut about going to the bathroom in space, and she asked this of Jorge Mester, the conductor of the Louisville Orchestra.
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STAMBERG: Don't your arms get tired?
JORGE MESTER: Well, actually, I've just finished three straight days of conducting the Mahler Sixth, and my right arm's starting to feel very heavy.
STAMBERG: Do people ask you this question?
MESTER: No, this is the very first time I've been asked that. Believe me now.
INSKEEP: She could ask uncomfortable questions, too. In 1975, the United States prepared to accept refugees after the defeat in the Vietnam War. So she broadcast calls with Americans who disapproved.
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STAMBERG: You were over there in Vietnam.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Right.
STAMBERG: You fought alongside of those people. You fought for them. Don't you have some kind of an obligation to them now?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: No.
INSKEEP: And she really listened to the answers. In 1978, Susan interviewed a researcher whose study found a surprising number of Americans were avid readers.
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UNIDENTIFIED RESEARCHER: We talked to 1,450 people, which would be the same as you'd try to call a national election.
STAMBERG: But elections really are different from questions about how much do you read. And the thing that strikes me is I don't believe it. I don't believe people give the honest answers to questions like this.
INSKEEP: Not long after that interview aired, a cartoon appeared in The New Yorker magazine. It depicted a woman handing the phone to her husband. Cartoonist Dean Vietor remembers what the wife said.
DEAN VIETOR: It's Susan Stamberg of National Public Radio. She wonders if you would defend yourself on the airwaves tomorrow.
INSKEEP: Few people have spent more time behind a microphone. Although when we brought a microphone to chat with her last year, Mrs. Stamberg pretended it was unfamiliar.
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STAMBERG: You're going to hold it?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I'm going to hold it. Yeah.
STAMBERG: That's fine. I don't know how to work those things.
INSKEEP: (Vocalizing) That's fine.
STAMBERG: Let me get this out of your way.
INSKEEP: She recalled her early days trying almost anything to illustrate the news.
STAMBERG: Idiot ideas, like on a very hot day in Washington, we went out and tried to cook an egg on the sidewalk.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) Did it work?
STAMBERG: No.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
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INSKEEP: What is the relationship that you build up with an audience when you're with them day after day over a long period of time?
STAMBERG: Well, in the beginning, there was sort of a cult that loved us on All Things Considered. If I went on the air with a cold, people would leave me chicken soup at the receptionist's desk.
INSKEEP: Oh, my.
STAMBERG: And I, raising no questions and having no fear about it, drank it.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
STAMBERG: Can you imagine doing that today?
INSKEEP: You'd want a food taster.
STAMBERG: Yes.
INSKEEP: So people felt connected to you.
STAMBERG: They felt very connected. The women in the audience knew I was like them. We were all raising children. This was destination radio because it was a sound of more than goo goo ga ga, and it gave them something to think about.
INSKEEP: Susan Stamberg drew pictures on the radio, using words and sounds to put images in your head. Once, correspondent Ira Flatow brought Susan a story about Life Savers.
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IRA FLATOW: The kids tell me that when you chew on them, they give off a glow, something like a spark or a sparkle.
INSKEEP: Which they tested by trying it in the dark.
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STAMBERG: I saw it. I saw it.
FLATOW: What did you see?
STAMBERG: I saw a flash of kind of greenish light, just for a fraction of a second.
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STAMBERG: I saw it again.
INSKEEP: And if radio could give you the look of something, it could give you a taste. In 2002, I had just started as a program host when Susan burst into the studio.
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STAMBERG: I just thought it'd be nice to welcome you, see how you're doing, is the chair comfy, the microphone fits, all that.
INSKEEP: The chair's fine, but I smell something in the package you brought here.
STAMBERG: Well, now that you mention it, I thought...
INSKEEP: She went on to present me with cranberry relish - her mother-in-law's recipe, which included horseradish and which she sneaked on the air Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving, including once while talking with Martha Stewart.
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STAMBERG: On this...
MARTHA STEWART: You know, I read the recipe.
STAMBERG: Oh, you did?
STEWART: Oh, I like it. I think it sounds really good. And actually, I'm going to try it. I know - is it supposed to be a joke?
INSKEEP: Another time, Susan presented her cranberry relish to the band, The Cranberries.
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STAMBERG: It comes out thick and kind of chunky, and the color is Pepto-Bismol pink.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: Oh, OK.
STAMBERG: Shall I go on?
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: There's more?
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THE CRANBERRIES: (Singing) I know I've felt like this before...
INSKEEP: The rapper Coolio liked it so much that he wrote a cranberry relish rap.
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COOLIO: (Rapping) Now I got a relish, fellas. Mama Stamberg, that's what y'all heard. It's Coolio, not Stamberg.
STAMBERG: My goodness. Thank you so much. A very happy Thanksgiving to you, Coolio.
COOLIO: Same to you, same to you.
INSKEEP: During her decades at NPR, Mrs. Stamberg gave a lot of advice behind the scenes. And as she retires, many of her words are still in my head. The first time she ever interviewed me for the radio, we had to do a second take of something. I didn't like that - said it wouldn't feel genuine. To which she cheerfully replied that our job was to perform. And here was the art of Susan Stamberg's performance. What you heard of her - the curiosity, the humor, the generosity, the toughness - that performance was also Susan Stamberg. It was real. She did her job with relish. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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