WASHINGTON, D.C. – This is where Luke Russert grew up: among journalists, living in the shadows of monuments and the hallways of history.
This is also how Luke Russert grew up, chatty and engaging, a smile etched onto his face, a face shaped like his father’s, doling out anecdotes as though he were perched on the corner stool of a South Buffalo bar.
The shocking death of the South Buffalo legend remains one of those “I remember where I was”
Russert belongs in that place, but in the duality of his life – one spent growing up the son of a legendary broadcaster and a famous writer – he belongs here, too. This is the National Press Club, a place with upholstered wooden chairs and a room called the Truman Lounge, because Harry Truman once played the piano nestled against the wall.
It is lunchtime, and Russert is here talking about the man and the subject that has defined his life: his Buffalo-born father, Tim Russert, the iconic moderator of “Meet the Press,” who died of heart attack in 2008, when Luke was 22 years old.
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“I always knew from a young age that people recognized my father, and I always knew we were a little bit different,” Russert said. “We’d be walking into a restaurant, they would look up, and I would always hear the whispers: ‘There’s Tim Russert. That’s his wife, Maureen,’ " referring to Maureen Orth, the noted author and Vanity Fair correspondent. "I knew that was special, and that I sort of had a role to play in that, which was to be the dutiful son, look people in the eye and shake their hands and project out the proper image. I came to peace with that.”
Luke Russert grew up in Washington, D.C., but thanks to his late father, the newsman Tim Russert, he has a strong Buffalo connection. During this interview about his book "Look For Me There" at the National Press Club in Washington, Russert talked about his go-to Buffalo spots.
Luke Russert's "Look For Me There" was published May 2, 2023 by Harper Horizon.
Even in this simple setting, sitting at a quiet table abutting a 14th floor window, Russert is projecting that proper image now. He’s talking about the most personal of losses – the untimely and highly publicized death of his father – and how he’s doing it in the most public of ways: Russert has authored a memoir, “Look For Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself.”
The book chronicles the phone call informing him and his mother of his father’s death – Luke and Maureen were in Italy when Tim collapsed at NBC’s Washington studio – and the weeks, months and years that followed: As thousands gathered for his father's wake and funeral services, Luke took on the role of gracious host, consoling luminaries, chatting up President George W. Bush and delivering a eulogy and reflections so eloquent that it earned him offers to become a television broadcaster. He was only months out of Boston College when, like his dad, he became an NBC journalist.
You knew that the late Tim Russert would get some prominent mentions and highlights during the 70th anniversary program of NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. But there were a couple of unscripted moments that had to bring smiles to some fans of the late South Buffalo legend. During Chuck Todd’s interview with Buffalo native Thomas E. Perez, the chairman
Inevitable scoffs of nepotism were audible, but quieted over time. As an NBC congressional correspondent, Russert proved himself a solid journalist in his own right, building a network of sources on Capitol Hill and digging for truth.
“He was just so instinctively good,” recalled Chuck Todd, then NBC News' political director and now moderator of “Meet the Press.”
Russert had long ago accepted that his father's legacy would define how people view his own life.
“I realized there's very few things I could do in this world where the first line of my obituary wouldn’t be ‘Son of Tim Russert,’ ” he said. “I actually joked about that with President Bush. 'You’re twice elected president and the first line of your obit will still be "son of" … .’ ”
But in the eight years that arced Luke’s college graduation, his father’s death and his own television career, Luke had never defined how he viewed his life.
“He proved he could follow in his dad's footsteps, if he wanted to,” Todd said by phone this week. “He did that a while ago. I think what happened to him is, it still didn't get rid of the emptiness. Whatever it was that he was looking for, it didn't solve it.”
Tim Russert with Luke on the set of NBC's "Meet the Press." Photo by Richard Ellis.
On Sunday, Russert appeared on “Meet the Press” to talk about his book. Todd shared this excerpt on air: “The last eight years have been such a whirlwind that I’ve never fully processed my grief for Dad. It’s apparent that I’ve spent so much time honoring his legacy that I’ve never truly accepted his death. Worse, by honoring that legacy, I have failed to forge my own life.”
That quote resonated with Todd, who was 16 when his own father died.
“Unfortunately, Luke and I share this in common,” Todd said. “You never get over it. You think about it every day. But you learn to live with it, and you learn to learn with it.”
Sometimes, others help you learn, too. For Russert, that lesson came from an unexpected source: then-Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican from Cincinnati who, like Tim and Luke Russert, was devoutly Catholic and Jesuit-educated. As Luke recounts in his book, one day in the spring of 2015, Boehner and his security detail brushed by him in the hallways of the Capitol.
“Come by my office in an hour,” Boehner said to Russert, who showed up expecting to talk about a story. Boehner wanted to talk about Russert’s life choices.
“What are you doing on Capitol Hill?” Boehner said. “You’ve been here awhile now, huh?”
Russert told the speaker that was in his sixth year covering Congress. They bantered for a bit; Russert wondered why Boehner, who was third in line for the presidency, would urge someone to leave Capitol Hill.
“Look, you’re a young guy,” Boehner said. “At one point, you up and realize you’ve spent your entire life here and never once got out into anything else.”
A conversation with John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, prompted Luke Russert reevaluate his life's path, leave journalism, and pursue travel as a means of finding himself. Photo by Alexandra Moe.
Boehner, in an interview last week, elaborated on why he summoned Russert that day.
“My wife and I have two daughters, and over the years, I've adopted a bunch of sons: members of Congress, staffers and a couple of journalists,” said the former speaker, who knew both Tim Russert and Maureen Orth.
“I had a lot of relationships with reporters,” Boehner said, “but I had a little different relationship with Luke. Maybe it was because I knew his mom and his dad. Maybe because I liked him more than the others. Kid did a nice job.”
Boehner liked to tease Russert about his booming voice, and his career choice, asking, “When are you going to grow up and get a real job?” But that needling probed deeper than a superficial joke.
“I thought there was something special about Luke, and I thought that he was not maximizing his own abilities,” Boehner said.
By mid-2015, Boehner knew he was retiring from Congress at the end of the year, and decided that one day to have a candid talk with Russert.
“I thought rather than just shooting the breeze in the hall, maybe I'll just call him into my office,” Boehner said. “So I did.”
The impact of the conversation ran deep. Unbeknownst to Boehner at the time, Russert had already been reflective.
“The feelings were there, but that woke them up in a real way,” he said. “It was a conversation that rattled me. It was very unexpected. I had to reconcile the fact that here's somebody who's at the top and saying, ‘Is it worth it?’ That caused me to re-evaluate a lot of stuff.”
Son of South Buffalo native Tim Russert says he wants to pursue other
Over the next year, Russert immersed himself in introspection: “What is this feeling of longing for? Where is this feeling of emptiness coming from? ... I am not totally happy. I’m not satisfied. I kind of feel like I’m drifting through.”
The following summer, as the 2016 Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump presidential campaign was heating up, he announced on Twitter that he was leaving NBC News and included the email he sent to staff. It said, in part:
“It’s fair to say my broadcast career began in an unusual way after college graduation and the death of my father. As a result, I threw myself into the work and never took the time to reflect, to travel and to experience many things that would have given me a clearer sense of what my future should be. Now at 30, I look forward to taking some time away from political reporting and focusing my efforts on other endeavors that I've long wanted to pursue.”
Luke Russert on a riverboat in Vietnam.
With money from his father’s estate, Russert had financial freedom. He decided to travel, with no end date in mind. His journey began in Maine, driving along the coastline and deep into the woods with his dog, Chamberlain, in an old truck his father had given him. For a privileged kid who grew up to hold an exalted reporting job in the nation’s capital, “a drive through a working forest on old logging roads qualifies as an adventure,” Russert writes.
It’s dangerous, too: Russert brushed with his own demise when a roaring timber truck on a narrow roadway nearly collided with him head-on. But the effort to decompress blossomed into a realization.
“The power of aloneness – those hours, those miles, alone in my truck, with only my dog, my music, and my thoughts – has helped open my mind to self-discovery,” Russert writes.
Luke Russert and his mother, Maureen Orth, at a craft market in Paraguay.
He decided to keep traveling, and embarked on a three-and-a-half-year journey around the world, journaling and posting to Instagram. “Look For Me There” is drawn from the writing Russert kept throughout his sometimes-harrowing travels. He processes his father’s death, and at points speculates how Tim Russert would have felt about his son trying to do things like charm his way through Bolivian border security when he didn’t have the proper paperwork. (He suspects his dad would have been “terrified.”) Luke also explores the mother-son relationship with Orth, herself an experienced traveler and former Peace Corps volunteer.
Orth, whom Luke describes as the stricter of his parents, supported his journeying – and years into his travels, also urged him to stop and figure out his next steps. He did that, but on his own timeline, and it is still going.
“I like storytelling,” Russert said. He's finished his lunch of chili and chicken Caesar salad; now sipping a black coffee and turning introspective. For a guy who has so many of his father’s traits – gregarious and affable, a good companion for a five-star meal or a five-dollar beer – he has discovered a difference between himself and Tim Russert.
“I proudly say he was very competitive, in a good way,” Luke said. "But there's what I call the sort of Michael Jordan, Kobe competitiveness. Derek Jeter competitiveness, which is just an absolute desire to put your best self out there to win. Not win at all costs, but to win. And I could sometimes get to that level, but not all that time. He had that every day.”
Luke Russert stands at the sign for Tim Russert park in West Seneca.
If you’re Luke Russert, what do you do now? How do you parlay that realization into figuring out what’s next?
You start by telling more stories: on page, on screen, in whatever form it takes.
“I think I’ve been blessed with a talent to do it,” Russert said. “I learned at the feet of two incredible people – my parents – how to do it. That’s something I want to explore.”
The journey isn’t over.
Luke Russert in Cambodia.
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Russert is visiting Buffalo for a book launch event on Sunday. He's appearing at 6 p.m. at The Blackthorn Restaurant & Pub, 2134 Seneca St., Buffalo, for a book reading and signing. Pre-ordered copies of "Look For Me There" are available through Talking Leaves Books and include a free pint from Blackthorn. Attendees are asked to register here. A portion of the book sales will be donated to the GoFundMe page for the late Buffalo firefighter Jason Arno, who died in the line of duty March 1. Donations will also be accepted on-site.
