An Afternoon with Jacques By Janice Leber

Jacques Cousteau lived a long, full and adventurous life; he brought the undersea world to the eyes of millions, explored unknown realms, and in general accomplished more than anyone can hope to in a single lifetime, doing what he loved. He touched many lives. One of them was mine.

In 1975 I was sitting in the news room at Pacifica station KPFK in Los Angeles when the phone rang. The public affairs director asked me if I could get over to the Cousteau Society office to interview Jacques Cousteau within the next hour. I had never done an interview before in my life, so of course I said, "You bet!"

In the next ten minutes I asked everyone I saw, "If you could ask Jacques Cousteau one question, what would it be?" I got some good questions and, lacking sufficient lead time to get nervous, I set out to do my very first radio interview.

Cousteau was suave, pleasant and patient with me in the 90 minutes or so we spent together. His comments touched on many topics, but always seemed to work their way back to his alarm over the state of the environment.

After that I was KPFK's "Cousteau expert." When he called a press conference to announce his support of Prop. 15, California's 1976 anti-nuclear initiative, they sent me to talk to ol' Jacques again.

The press conference was set for 9 a.m. at a hotel in Beverly Hills. About 8:45 I walked in and saw what I craved – coffee. I jammed across the room and started loading up on caffeine and danish, when I looked back the way I’d come and saw David Crosby and Graham Nash, two of my favorite musicians in all the world. I couldn’t believe it.

I barged in on their quiet conversation to introduce myself and assure them they needed no introduction. "I can’t wait for Jacques to see me here," David Crosby said. "He thinks I don’t even know there’s a nine o’clock in the morning."

That’s about when Cousteau walked in. He recognized me and went to shake my hand. Alas, I had been handling danish, and tried to shake with one finger. He seemed forgiving of my predicament, but I certainly felt like a fool.

My original interview with Cousteau ended up doing double duty. My first job out of college was as a news director at KAST-AM in Astoria, Oregon, a seagoing town -- just when the U.S. territorial limit was being increased from 12 to 100 miles out to sea. In my interview conducted 18 months previously Cousteau had spoken about this, about what a bad idea it was to try to "claim" part of the ocean because "your sea today is my sea tomorrow." I was able to use clips of Cousteau for a big local news story, and my boss was astounded at my great connections.

I'll tell you a secret. Cousteau wasn't quite as fluent with English as his Undersea World specials on TV would lead you to believe. I spoke with him for over an hour, but after I cut out all his "errrrrrrr"s and "hmmmmmmm"s, the interview was only 45 minutes long. (Those outtakes, strung together, made for a very strange listening experience.)

Another tidbit that caught my attention as I went into the interview The Man was a headline someone had clipped from a newspaper and taped on his office door. It read, "Eroticism and the French." It was an indication to me of the good humor with which he lived.

Throughout his incredible life, Cousteau was perhaps the most vocal and recognizeable environmentalist in the world -- and possibly the most effective as well. His voice and influence will be sorely missed. He devoted his life to arousing public attention to the peril of planet earth.

Not to mention what he did for my radio career – all because I had the dumb luck to be sitting by the phone that day.

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