Warren Watson
First Thoughts
3-12-08

Peter Jennings' legacy

Peter Jennings was a proud American -- but for only two of his 67 years when he died in 2005.

Jennings, longtime TV journalist, was a Canadian. But a love of American ideals and the principles of the Constitution led him to seek U.S. citizenship shortly before he died of cancer.

Jennings was remembered by friends, students, teachers, journalists and jurists once again last weekend in Philadelphia at the second annual Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution at the National Constitution Center -- in the shadow of Liberty Bell.

"The United States is the only nation in the world founded on creed," Jennings wrote shortly before his death. "Being American is not a matter of birth. It is an ideological commitment."

For the second year in a row, our J-Ideas project was part of the Jennings faculty, along with luminaries such as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ABC News journalist Lynn Sherr, author Mark Bowden, and NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg. We delivered a First Amendment workshop for 70 high school teachers and students as part of the two-day Jennings program, held to honor Jennings, the popular anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight."

Participants included several justices from courts of appeal, law school deans, reporters from major newspaper and magazines, television anchors and more.
And high school students from all across the country, who smiled when they learned that Jennings, in the days before becoming a U.S. citizen, began carrying a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution. "Peter loved this country," said Jane Eisner, the director of national programs for the National Constitution Center. "He engaged it all the time, talked about it."

J-Ideas colleague Gerry Appel and I left behind a small mark for the students, but Jennings had left his legacy.