You know all my ‘trivia’, Cheryl.

“World War II intervened and I signed up with the Signal Cameras Corps. An army electrician took me under his wing and taught me how to light a photo shoot. I didn’t trust the light meter so I ran test shots.”It would prove the kind of attention to detail that helped carry my father to the peak of his career; I saw it in everything he did.

“The army paid for a room at the Capitol Hotel in Manhattan, but I preferred to go home to my parents and Sheldon in the Bronx at night. It didn’t feel like I was in the army. It was more like I had a 9 to 5 job with some great adventure attached.

“On the way to a shoot, Cowan” (who received the assignment to be Burt’s assistant, and became a friend for life) “and I took a quick detour to stop in Virginia to say hello to my first cousin, also named Burt Reinhardt and in the Army. The cousin, who held a higher rank, treated me with disdain: ‘What do you want, soldier?’”

I heard about this half a century later: Burt never forgot those who had helped him or those that had not.

“After one of the countless hair-raising adventures that kept us laughing for the next seventy years, Cowan and I arrived 2 days late to an assigned filming.” (When army friends came to my parents’ house for dinner, the grown men laughed themselves silly remembering the time Bob tore the shirt off another’s back and other reasons Bob never got promoted. ) “The film’s director, Leo Tover, ASC, “The Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Misty”, etc. didn’t react well. Within the week, we received our assignments to ship overseas.

“Bob Cowan changed the course of my life and my career. But he’s not someone the public knows.”It was beyond apparent that Bob was Burt’s best friend when many many years later, he and his family welcomed me when I showed up at his family’s house unexpectedly with 5 boys for Thanksgiving dinner. Without missing a beat, they seated us at the table.

A few years later, my dad and I were part of the bagpipe ceremony for Bob’s oldest daughter’s wedding at Stanford.

“Until we were shipped out, we were stationed at the Signal Corps Photographic Center in Astoria, New York, where we made training films. A number of top Hollywood cameramen who were members of the ASC were there. “We made the first Wac training film. Any Wac had to watch it. There was no training. They watched it in the movies.”

My dad underplayed his many talents. Throughout his life, he excelled at almost every activity he engaged in: running companies, playing gin rummy, washing dishes, fruits or vegetables. But he only reported to me one thing that he prided himself at being good at: cleaning his guns while in the army.

“Aboard ship, a small Jewish kid from the Bronx, having not had basic training for the extent the overseas duties required, I collapsed on the deck. I was carried to the captain’s quarters. But quickly woke to blasts: ‘Wake up. We’re being attacked.’ I had to quickly ask myself: ‘Should I grab my gun or my camera?’”

“When I was president of CNN, one of the guys who worked for me went to Washington to interview the man in charge of the WWII newsreels. He received the response: ‘What are you doing here? You work for the man who knows more about those newsreels than anyone.’