Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 45

The Detroit News Inside: Health Babies to go Ford Hospital shortens hospital stays by giving new mothers more care in less time at home. Page 3E Commentary in No lullaby can soothe a mom 1 when she's away from her child I 1 J. f'l 7 if wn 4 XjVgj Section Thursday, August 17, 1995 You don't have to be crazy to sing a lullaby to a child hundreds of miles away. You just have to be a parent. Parenthood changes everything, including the realities of time and distance.

It doesnt matter where our children are; in our hearts, they're as close as a memory. It's a lesson every parent learns some time or another. The only variable is when. For me, it was a lesson learned early, when my oldest child was barely 2. Ali's father and I divorced, (J 1 XI 3 i rr i "We're just getting started" rebuilding lost viewership, says Channel 62's Jay Newman.

"We're in this for the long haul." CBS says its toughest job is reviving Channel 62 ByTimKiska Detroit News Television Writer In the contest for the hearts and minds of Detroit television viewers, Dan Rather is losing to Doo-gieHowser. And CBS isn't happy. David Poltrack, CBSBroadcast Group executive vice-president for planning and research, says Detroit "is the toughest situation for us" in the country. He maintains that recovering from the move last fall from Channel 2 (WJBK) to Channel 62 (WGPR) an established UHF station with little audience and no news presence is the hardest task any CBS station faces. CBS lost roughly 46 percent of its Metro Detroit prime-time audience between May 1994 and last May, according to Poltrack.

The numbers for CBS stations in Milwaukee and Atlanta which also changed stations when longtime affiliates switched to Fox, as happened in Detroit are similar. The race explains a lot about the problems facing Channel 62: Last month, Doogie Howser reruns on Channel 20 (WXON) actually beat the CBS Evening News on 62. So how long will it take to bring CBS back to where it was before the Dec. 11 switch? Under normal circumstances, says Poltrack, CBS might bring a new affiliate up to speed in two years. But Channel 62 may take even longer.

"Building a news presence, that's two years right there," says Poltrack. "We've never been in this tough of a situation before." The station's fortunes can be viewed two ways: the glass is half empty, or it's half full but getting fuller every month. On the plus side, the station went from virtually a zero share before CBS to an 11 percent share (the number of TV sets tuned in) of Detroit's prime-time viewing audience last May. Please see CBS, Page4E A socle in tho Here are July ratings of several CBS shows nationwide and on Channel 62 in Metro Detroit. Figures represent percentage of TV households.

National Detroit Late Show i with David a not entirely unexpected ending to a marriage that started for too many wrong reasons, many years too soon. Ali, we ultimately decided, would live with me. But she'd spend every NOREEN Seebacher summer with her father in Pennsylvania. She's 11 now and gone once again for the summer. Each June, I take her to the airport, give her a kiss, an extra long hug and send her on her way.

When she was very young, I cried openly at the gate, standing there helplessly long after the plane had departed. Now I tend to weep silently, or at least later while alone in my car as I drive home without her. I cry less for Ali than for me, for childhood innocence lost and the pain of separation. For I know my child will weather her know she can't hear me, but I think maybe she can feel me, holding her in my thoughts as we both drift off to 10 vacation. She'll be fed; shell be clothed; shell fall asleep in a soft bed.

What I wonder is: Will Will I be able to fall asleep feeling detached from a part of myself, unable even to say good night? Those are the times when I sing. In the stillness, I murmur Hush little baby, don't say a the same song I used to soothe her ever since she was born. I know she can't hear me, but I think maybe she can feel me, holding her in my thoughts as we both drift off to sleep. The hardest part of divorce is the lingering separations. They create unnatural barriers and unfairly tested loyalties.

They force those who love each other apart at the same time they thrust the two people who wanted separation so badly back together, to make plans for a child they reluctantly share. When Ali was my only child, I thought it would be easier if I had other children to care for in her absence. I thought a busy household would fill the void. Four children later, I know I was wrong. One child is never a substitute for another; they each hold a place in our hearts as distinct as their own personalities.

In many ways, it was easier before the others were born. Then, in the summer, I could take a hia-. tus from parenthood. I'd consciously create an identity apart from that as a mother. I'd stay out late, sleep long in the morning, skip dinner and leave the laundry undone.

You can't do that when there are other children around. Even when one is gone, the demands remain. You're still a parent, 24 hours a day. You just get one less kiss when you tuck each one in at night. So rather than a kiss, I pull a loop off my invisible daisy chain.

Each night, the wait gets shorter. In a month 14 days a week, shell be home. Ill hold her tight and I i I I run my fingers through her hair. Ill marvel at how much she's grown, question her about friends she's made, fill her in on the latest news about her brother and sisters. ii Over the following days, well fall back into normal routines.

I'll prod her to clean up her room, stop teas- ing her sister and finish her salad before her ice cream. Ill sigh in exasperation when she's stubborn, and 111 fall into bed at night exhausted from the added demandsof yet another child. I'll tell my husband I'm tired, that I'm going crazy, that I never seem to get anything done. And then I'll smile. Once again, my children will all be under one roof.

Once again, 111 feel complete. Noreen Seefofcher is a New York-based five-lance writer. Douglas Healy Associated Press Disabled since age 19, ABC News correspondent John Hockenberry has pushed the professional and personal limits of life. Hell Wheels ABC's John Hockenberry is daring, defiant and, oh yeah, disabled 3 Pi -v Hockenberry's memoir is less one man's triumph-over-adversity story than an adventure. on the road for a long time.

Too long. Everyone fell asleep, including the driver. The car turned over and rolled down an embankment. The driver was killed. Her friend and Hockenberry's buddy escaped with minor injuries.

Hockenberry had a fractured skull, a broken shoulder and collarbone and other assorted injuries. He also had three crushed vertebrae. Hockenberry, now 39, describes the accident and its aftermath in his book with surprising dispassion. In fact, it almost seems as though he is more an observer than participant. There is no sense of passage, of denial, of anger or any of the other steps of grief that people in trauma are supposed to transit.

Please see WHEELS, Page 4E I moving (violations') 1 Excerpt from 'Moving Violations': "If (Roger, a fellow patient in the rehabilitation center) saw any of us frustrated and angry, he would call out "Hey, look over there; it's one of Jerry's To be identified with the young poster people in wheelchairs dressing the set on the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon every year was the lowest of the low. "Roger's custom-crafted insult fused two powerful and contradictory themes in American life: sympathy and self-reliance. In rehab, we were taught never to let anyone push our chairs. We were taught to do things for ourselves and never ask for help. We were proud crips who were going to play basketball and win races and triumph over our disabilities.

"Outside rehab, self-reliance was a high-risk propositioaTo people raised on telethons, it looked suspiciously like a chip on the shoulder. Somewhere between bitterness and anger and Jerry's kids, we would all have to live. After listening to Roger, we all knew which pole we wanted to stay closest to." By Curt Schleier Special to The Detroit News NEW YORK John Hockenberry is a busy man. Just up from Washington, the ABC News correspondent rushes from the airport to the network's studios to wrap up a story. Then he dashes home to pack for a weekend camping trip, his first vacation in over a year.

His fiancee they are scheduled to marry in October is en route to help pack. Hockenberry made his reputation as a commentator for National Public Radio, reporting from such hot spots as Somalia, Moving Violations By John Hockenberry Hyperion, $24.95 367 pages where U.S. troops were under fire; the Iraq-Turkey border, where Kurds were being shot by Iraqi troops; the funeral in Tehran of the Ayatollah Khomeini, amid millions of Iranian mourners shouting "Death to and Jerusalem, working the pressroom phones while Iraqi Scud missiles flew overhead. The things he's done, the places he's been, the images he's seen there'd be a lot to discover about him if he'd accomplished it all under "normal" circumstances. What makes Hockenberry's achievements more remarkable to everyone but Hockenberry is that he's done and seen it all from the seat of his wheelchair.

Hockenberry is a paraplegic or, as he calls himself, a "crip." He is, in fact, not just a crip. He's a crip with an attitude. A bad attitude. In fact, at one point during an interview, a visitor, disturbed by the tone of some of his answers, asks Hockenberry if he is angry because of a question that was asked. No, a surprised Hockenberry replies: He's not angry.

He may just sound angry because he has a opinions. Strong opinions. Ask the New York cabbie who refused to help him with his wheelchair one evening and soon found his headlights knocked out. This is one of the anecdotes in Hockenberry's new book, Moving Violations, a surprisingly upbeat memoir that is less the anticipated one-man's-triumph-over-adver-sity story than an adventure. For the record: John Hockenberry, just 19 years old at the time, and a college friend were hitchhiking in February 1976.

They were picked up by two young women, college roommates heading home for an unscheduled vacation. Everyone had been Letterroan 51 4.7 Murphy Brown 10.7 9.3 Rescue- 91 1 7.4 5 6 Murder, She Wrote 10.3 8.3 CBS Evening News.with Dan Rather 6.7 1.6 Source: Nielsen Media Research.