I recently came across a business card I had saved for many years for sentimental reasons.
I now have it in a spot where I see it often. I want to be reminded of the story that goes with that simple black-and-white card with "Emily J. Friedrich" in the center.
In the spring of my junior year of college, I was accepted into a summer program on political journalism in Washington, DC. The program would consist of an internship and two classes at Georgetown University.
The rub? We had to find our own internship.
Chasing childhood dreams
My daughter is getting ready to graduate from college, and as we talk about her job search, I’ve been thinking back to the pre-Internet days of searching for internships and jobs. Now that there are so many ways to look for opportunities across the world – much less across a couple of state lines, as I was doing that spring – I feel a bit of awe for the old-school hoops we jumped through back then.
I don’t remember everything I did in my search for an internship. I do remember the decision that matters: I took a chance and called the Time-Life Washington bureau.
When I was growing up, we had huge coffee table books with images from LIFE magazine, and I leafed through them over and over. I loved newspapers, but I had a special place in my heart for news magazines; images were as powerful as the words for me (and sometimes more powerful), and they got more play in magazines.
Working for the company that had brought this magic into my house was a dream.
Creating a place
When I called that Washington bureau number, I asked the person who answered if they had internship programs. Instead of saying yes or no, the receptionist sent my call to someone else.
That someone else was Emily J. Friedrich.
I had no idea who she was or what she did in the bureau, but I explained why I had called.
“We don’t have internships,” she said, and 21-year-old me probably thought that would be that.
But it wasn’t. If I was going to be in the area any time soon, she said, I should let her know. Maybe I could come by and visit the bureau?
I don’t know if I had the presence of mind to immediately say, “Oh, I will be there soon,” or if I called her back soon after to say so. I do know that there was no doubt in my mind that I would be driving from Winston-Salem to Washington as soon as my class schedule and Emily Friedrich’s schedule dovetailed. There was no way I was letting this chance pass me by; even if it led nowhere, I would get to see the Time-Life bureau.
Soon after my cold call, I was in Washington, nervously finding my way to a very nice building on Connecticut Avenue to meet Emily, who, as it turned out, worked on the business/admin side of things at the bureau. She had short, stylish hair, wore glasses and had a warm smile that put my jittery self at ease.
By the end of our conversation, she had suggested that maybe working as a summer newsdesk assistant for TIME would be acceptable for my internship requirement, adding that it would be paid work.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune (I had encountered very few paid internships during college); I may have floated back to North Carolina.
Behind the scenes
My summer journalism program approved the work at the bureau (no surprise), and while I spent the summer doing mostly intern-level things, I had some opportunities to help with research and to write short items that ended up in TIME. As a perk, they sent me to the Ford’s Theater Gala (which yielded a tiny item), and I brought my sister along as my date.
But most of all, I had a chance to see how the magazines, especially TIME, came together each week, and to get to know the people behind the stories, some of whom were famous in the journalism world.
And I got to know Emily and others on the admin side of the bureau and soon came to appreciate the fact that without them, the journalists could not put out any magazines.
I stayed in touch with Emily and others in the bureau after I went back to college for my final year. After working for a newspaper in North Carolina for two years, I decided to join a friend and move to Washington, a place that I’d become fond of through two summers there. We moved without jobs (brave or stupid, depending on how you look at it), and when I was looking for temporary work to pay the rent, my friends at the Time-Life bureau gave me part-time work there. It was so nice to be in a familiar place with people I knew while I was getting the final pieces of my new life in DC to fall into place.
It all began with Emily taking a cold call from young me and creating an opportunity where one had not existed – and giving me the chance to learn an important lesson about chutzpah. (When someone asks if you’re going to be in the area, you make sure you’re in the area asap.)
Emily died far too early due to cancer, but her kindness has lived on for me and has reminded me to pay that kindness forward in any way I can.
As my daughter graduates and heads out into the work world, I can only hope that someone will be her Emily J. Friedrich.