CBS News calls Barry Petersen one of its most experienced correspondents in a network news career spanning more than four decades.
He has appeared on CBS News ducking sniper and mortar fire in Sarajevo, Libya, Syria and Gaza. He’s told lovely stories like the return of American jazz to Shanghai, the latest on Paris fashions and how people of Bhutan live what they call “Gross National Happiness.”
He has interviewed Hollywood stars from Jimmy Stewart to Anthony Hopkins and Pierce Brosnan.
As CBS’s Moscow correspondent, Barry covered Mikhail Gorbachev’s summit trips to Cuba, Malta, Washington, and East Berlin. He rode out on a tank convoy when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan; one of those reports was featured in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
His numerous accolades include four National Emmy Awards, several National Edward R. Murrow Awards and both an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University and a George Foster Peabody Award for his part in the coverage of the Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing, China, in 1989.
Over his career, he has lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Moscow, London, Tokyo, and Beijing. Since 2009, he has worked from Denver, Colorado, while continuing his reporting from the United States and from overseas.
He is also the author of Jan’s Story, Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer’s. His 2010 Sunday Morning story on Jan was honored with one of his Edward R. Murrow Awards and was nominated for a National Emmy Award. Jan died in 2013. His wife, Mary Nell Wolff, was also featured in that story. They married in 2014. Barry and Mary Nell have a second home on Southridge Drive in Palm Springs.
Petersen and his wife, Jan, also a journalist, lived around the world. Petersen covered some of the worst conflicts our generation has seen, while his wife anchored their daily lives. They both expected many more years of fabulous adventures.
Then one diagnosis instantly ended it all: at age 55, Jan was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Jan’s Story follows their complex, sometimes sad, sometimes joyful, journey of survival. Jan was alive but no longer remembered her husband of 20 years. Petersen met a woman—herself a widow—who understood his grief and the pain of loss. Together Petersen and Mary Nell created a “family of three,” including and caring for Jan.
Petersen writes about friends who condemned their relationship, and others who understood and supported their love, including Jan’s mother who encouraged the need to survive. His book is intensely personal, making clear that the only way to beat Alzheimer’s is for those left behind to go on with—and celebrate—life.
Petersen’s CBS News colleague, Dr. Jon LaPook, put it this way: “Barry Petersen’s utterly honest love story moved me to tears. With a reporter’s eye for detail and a poet’s insight, he poignantly shares his desperate attempt to care for the wife he adores. The book succeeds because he hides nothing. He intimately leads us through his fear, anger, magical thinking, guilt, depression, and—ultimately—reborn hope.”
The first 200 people at this event will receive a FREE copy of Jan’s Story: Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer’s.
Writers Series events are free to the public. This event will be live streaming. WATCH HERE.