Home • Clips • Resume

CSH Students Pray For Woodruff

February 2, 2006
by Keach Hagey

When NBC correspondent and Convent of the Sacred Heart parent David Bloom died while reporting on the war in Iraq in the spring of 2003, his family friend and network rival Bob Woodruff stepped in to fill some of the roles he left empty.

He spoke in Bloom's place at the school's commencement that year, encouraging the graduates to seek their passions in life. And his family has continued to support Bloom's widow and three daughters, who are in the lower and middle school at the all-girls Catholic school.

"Bob has been like a surrogate father to the Bloom girls," said Sister Joan Magnetti, the school's headmistress. "He comes to the father-daughter dances. He came to grandparents day to stand in when someone in their family couldn't come."

So when the school community heard that Woodruff and his cameraman for ABC's "World News Tonight" had been seriously injured by a roadside bomb while reporting just north of Baghdad on Sunday, the news came as a double blow.

Students responded by posting Woodruff's photograph on the bulletin board reserved for people they intend to pray for near the school's chapel, while teachers were urged to keep the injured journalists in their thoughts and prayers, school officials said.

"He loves Sacred Heart and we love him," Magnetti said of Woodruff. "That's why this has been so tense for us."

Woodruff suffered the worst wounds of the injured pair, sustaining head injuries and broken bones in addition to shrapnel wounds, according to reports. Both received immediate medical treatment in Baghdad, before being flown to a hospital in nearby Balal and later to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Woodruff's wife, Lee, joined them there, along with her good friend Melanie Bloom, who Lee Woodruff had sat with the night Bloom's husband died of an apparent blood clot three years before, according to reports. The Woodruffs live in Rye, where their four children attend local public schools, according to neighbors.

Knowing that this act of friendship left Bloom's own children alone back at home, Convent of the Sacred Heart parents stepped in to help out, according to Magnetti.

"Our parents have been very helpful, pitching in and caring for the Bloom girls," she said. "It's been a big Sacred Heart connection and involvement. We've had a lot of phone calls and e-mails back and forth."

On Tuesday, the journalists were flown into a Maryland hospital that military doctors recommended because it has the most expertise in handling the kinds of injuries that they suffered, according to reports.

ABC News President David Westin issued a statement yesterday saying that Woodruff was "coming along beautifully," according to ABC News. He was slowly being brought out of sedation and will be weaned off a breathing tube in the coming days. The condition of the cameraman, Doug Vogt, also continues to improve.

The journalists' brush with death on the battlefield revived painful memories at the school, where David Bloom, a recent convert to Catholicism, had helped with classes and raising money.

"He got very involved with Sacred Heart, and with our broadcast journalism class," Magnetti said. "Anytime that he could come, he would teach the girls how to interview, or how to write a story."

He also had plans to help expand the program, which at the time only had enough space and equipment to accommodate 14 girls at a time, according to former teacher Andrea Sherman, a former CNN producer who founded the broadcast journalism program in 2000.

"When Dave came to Iraq, his last phone call he made before getting on the plane was to our development director, saying that he would help raise money for the new library and broadcast journalism facilities," Magnetti said. "When Dave died, it was like part of us died in a way. It was terrible for us."

Bloom's wish was later granted by two other Sacred Heart parents, Alexandra and Steven Cohen, who gave the lead donation of $3 million toward the library project in memory of Bloom. Cohen founded SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, one of the country's most successful hedge funds, according to Business Week magazine.

The school's broadcast journalism program has already set many young women on the path to careers in the field. Kathryn Antonacci, now a junior studying journalism at the University of Notre Dame, was in the first class as a CSH sophomore. Two years later, she heard Woodruff speak to her graduating class.

"At the time he was a correspondent for ABC, but it was clear that it would not take long for him to rise through the ranks of evening news," she said. "He is a thoughtful, honest and passionate journalist, and that came through very clearly in his address."

Last summer, she met him again while interning at "The Charlie Rose Show" in New York City, and found his interview on the show equally inspiring.

"He had just returned from North Korea, which is a huge feat for a journalist, as access to the country is both difficult and dangerous," she said."Again, as with the first time I'd met him, he was very normal. Here he had just taken this giant leap in his career, and he was just so normal and thoughtful and interested in the show."

Sherman, Antonacci's former teacher, said she tried to instill a strong sense of journalistic ethics in her students, allowing them to tackle controversial subjects as long as they were objective and fair.

Sherman stopped teaching in 2003, and the program was taken over by Ellyn Stewart, who could not be reached for comment. Were she still teaching the program today, Sherman said she would add more lessons on being a critical media viewer.

"One thing I would like to engage them more in now is discussions of what is news, and is what we are seeing on TV really news," she said. "I would want to make sure they can distinguish between a serious news broadcast, like '60 Minutes,' compared to some things that are passing as news."

She would also talk about the dangers of reporting today, particularly in light of the recent kidnapping of journalist Jill Caroll in Iraq. Her captors' deadline for the demands to be met passed earlier this week, and Caroll's fate remains unknown.

Magnetti said she addressed these topics when speaking to the upper school students recently, pointing out that, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 61 journalists have been killed so far in the Iraq War, by far the most of any conflict in history.

"What does it now say about how targeted these journalists are, because they are trying to get the real story?"

She said the school's curriculum has many courses that deal with war, and the faculty often stresses the importance of not believing everything one reads in a newspaper. Woodruff's injuries serve as a reminder of how difficult, and important, it is to see events firsthand, she said.

"Bob really wanted to get at the story, and the only way you get at the story is being there, which is a very dangerous and gutsy thing to do," she said.