By Rick Davis
(CNN) — It was sometime in 1991 when I got a call from my boss, senior news executive Ed Turner.
“Rick, how would you like to get another show?” he asked.
At the time I was the executive producer of CNN’s Washington-based public affairs shows, including “Crossfire,” “Evans & Novak,” “Capital Gang” and “Reliable Sources.”
Ed told me CNN wanted me to oversee a weekly show with Jesse Jackson out of the DC bureau. That sounded like a bad idea, and I told Ed that Jesse was not a journalist. We shouldn’t do that.
Well, Ed said firmly, it is not up for debate. The decision has been made. Meet with Jesse and make it work.
I couldn’t imagine it at the time, but that conversation would begin a 35-year professional and personal relationship with the charismatic civil rights leader, who died at 84 last week in Chicago.
I can’t add much to the many beautiful and insightful words written about Jesse on his passing. Others can better explain his remarkable journey to make America better for the disenfranchised, and his zeal to help create a true rainbow of inclusion.
But I can tell you about the man I got to know behind the scenes.
Let’s start with the show, which aired weekly on Saturdays. I named it “Both Sides with Jesse Jackson” to signal it wouldn’t be dominated by Jesse’s point of view. I felt the format had to be somewhat of a debate since Jesse was just a few years from his two history-making runs for the Democratic presidential nomination. And I decided that for the show to be taken seriously, we’d need to book guests from across the political spectrum to have civil conversations about the issues he cared about.
We had our challenges. While my work on these CNN shows was my only job, it certainly wasn’t Jesse’s. It may have been one of his last priorities. That led to eight-plus years of weekly frustration with Jesse’s schedule, which usually meant he arrived less than an hour or two before the Friday taping.
But that was the only negative part of the relationship. Most weeks we produced a smart program that dealt with the most important issues of the moment – domestic and international – with guests who wanted to come debate the great Jesse Jackson.
The show’s staff and I soon got to know Jesse and his many good qualities: His commanding presence, his good humor, how he lit up a room and how he greeted so many with big bear hugs. And maybe most importantly, how he pushed us to focus on issues that didn’t always get attention on the rest of the network or elsewhere.
By then I had learned how to manage on-air pundits’ unique personalities and, yes, egos. But I soon learned that Jesse was way more than just a civil rights icon and political heavyweight. For me, it eventually became personal.
Early on I saw up close what a big heart he had. The first year of the show, 1992, was a devastating one for my family. In February my wife Linda lost her sister Frankie to melanoma in her early thirties. Two months later I lost my beloved brother Alan to lung cancer. In both cases Jesse took the time to call our parents to console them and to send them flowers.
Jesse called me all the time, either because he wanted me to get him on CNN to discuss an important issue or to complain about something on CNN that he didn’t like. But he never started a conversation without asking, “How’s your family?” And he meant it. He always wanted to hear how my parents were doing.
Here are a few personal memories of Jesse that I will never forget.
‘Put her on speaker’
A few weeks after my brother died, Jesse walked into my office before a taping and said, “What’s the matter? You look down.” I told him I had just spoken to my mother and she was depressed about t