Steve Hartman hits the road each week to document stories of American kindness and compassion, like what happened when an 8-year-old boy gave a $20 bill he'd found to a soldier to thank him for his service, or the bittersweet tale of a man tasked with moving his widowed father out of the house in which he’d made a life for 50 years.
The first story earned the CBS News correspondent one of his three Emmy Awards; the latter brought (and continues to bring) more mail from viewers that anything else he's done.
And both stories will be showcased at the Valentine Theatre Thursday night, when Hartman returns to his hometown of Toledo to headline a benefit for the Jesuit Scholars program at St. John's High School – which also happens to be his Alma mater.
Though his face is beamed into millions of homes each Friday during the CBS Evening News, it's the first time Hartman will give a public presentation in the city where he was born.
What took so long?
“Nobody asked,” he said with a laugh during a phone conversation earlier this week. “The focus was on Max Klinger up until now, I guess.”
What: An Evening on the Road with Steve Hartman
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Where: Valentine Theatre, 410 Adams St., Toledo
Tickets: $27
Information: www.valentinetheatre.com or 419-242-2787
Hartman concedes that the road to the CBS Evening News took many years and a few lucky breaks, beginning with a high school English teacher who told him he was a talented writer (“He said it so sincerely I actually believed him”), and a college internship at WTOL, Channel 11, in an era when stations still put stories by their interns on the air.
“It was a lot of rungs along the ladder, which, looking back, was the most fun part,” he said of his decades-long career. “It started in Toledo and the [WTOL] internship was considered one of the best in the Midwest, because you could actually be on TV. Then they hired me full time after that.”
Although he was hired as a new reporter, the job introduced him to the world of features – a genre that would become his bread and butter not too many years later.
“Even back in Toledo I really liked doing features,” he recalled. “I was the only reporter doing nights, and they wouldn't let me do features except on Friday night, because I guess there was less of a news load. That's really where it all began; the Friday night feature for me was right there at WTOL.”
At 56, Hartman's career as a broadcast feature reporter has continued to bring him acclaim, and spanned such programs as Everybody Has a Story, Assignment America with Katie Couric, the Stevening News and Coast to Coast.
Inheriting the On the Road mantle from the legendary Charles Kuralt – a man whose homespun demeanor and sonorous voice made him a broadcast troubador in the 1970s and ’80s – came as a pleasant surprise.
“I think everybody thought that his segment would never return (Kuralt died in 1997), so when they told me out of the blue they wanted to name my segment On the Road, it was and remains one of the greatest honors of my life.”
That was nearly 500 segments ago — stories ranging from a child buying fast food for the homeless to, most recently, a Pittsburgh man named John Potter who trolls the Internet for people in his community who need technical help, whether it be a broken scooter or appliance repair, and provides it free of charge.
Hartman will share clips and memories of some of his more memorable stories when he visits the Valentine Theatre Thursday, including that of Myles Eckert who found a $20 bill in a restaurant parking lot and gave it to a soldier he saw sitting alone in a restaurant. That simple act brought Eckert national attention, and even led to crowd sourcing efforts around the country in the name of doing good deeds.
Myles Eckert is from Toledo. So, too, was the elderly man being moved out of his home. The son doing the moving was Hartman himself.
“It wasn’t that tough; it was actually a joy,” Hartman said of the piece, which continues to generate mail. “I enjoyed sharing him with our viewers. He was old, he died just a few months ago, and he was ready to go. Me having this forum to be able to share him was really fun. I think a lot of people saw their dad in him.
“These were both Toledo stories. It’s funny, you leave home, but home doesn’t leave you.”
Hartman says he’ll show his absolute favorite stories Thursday night, and talk about growing up in Toledo. “We’re just going to talk about lessons from the road.”
Just how important was Toledo to the celebrated journalist Steve Hartman has become?
“It was absolutely crucial,” he said. “I think it’s the best place in America to be from. I would like to move back there, but my wife’s not from Toledo and it’s hard to convince someone who’s not from there that Toledo is the end-all be-all.
“I’m comfortable with people from all walks of life, rich and poor, and I credit Toledo in large part for that. It’s a very diverse area. It’s just a great place to be from.”
First Published September 11, 2019, 11:50 p.m.
