peter: how did you get from fairleigh dickinson to this beach writing -- speechwriting department ofhe white house? peggy: i went to new york newspapers and asked if i could be a writer, i will start anywhere but i would really like to be a columnist and they last -- they laughed and said honey, new york is where you end up if you have done well, it's not where you start out. i had just graduated college, a friend of mine wrote me a note from boston, she had just lost a roommate. and after college the way i was making my living was as a temporary secretary. executives in the old days would have a secretary who might go on vacation for a month or leave and have a baby and they needed a temporary secretary to hold on the job and answer the phone. i had a bunch of those jobs. one was that the cbs broadcast center in new york. i took the bus every day for new jersey. at the cbs broadcast center in new york i was looking for a fellow who worked in the human relations area, a great guy. there were women in the office who would sit around chatting and i told them i wanted to be a writer and

the fairleigh dickinson spectator. and i wrote the editorials.nd i was a reader by nature and i read all of the local newspapers but i was a print person. i was words observed by the eye. i had never been a words observed by the ear person. and i had to learn that real quick. and learn that a sentence that you give an anchor on the noon to 1:00 p.m. hour, that first sentence of his report, that first sentence cannot go five lines and have clauses and commas and semicoalons, do you know what i mean? it's quicker and straighter. blunter is not the word. it can be very subtle. but you're delivering information in a way that is more conversational than literary in a printed matter sort of way. so learning that took me a while. i was aware i had a lot to learn. and i tried to learn and i did. peter: how did you get to washington? and ronald reagan? peggy: i -- this is the mid 1970's. in that time i was becoming politically, shockingly conservative. i was reading national review, i'd been reading national review for a while. we were in the middle -- th