CBS NEWS
A Division of Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.
2020 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C. 20036
(202) 296-1234

Dear Mrs. Lindbergh:

We once met at a dinner party in New York given by a Cuban friend, Ophelia, whose married name I have now forgotten.

That is a slim presumption for this letter but on the chance that you may know me, and favorably, from television, I am writing you to ask you to consider a televised conversation with me in the near future.

I am beginning a series of filmed, one hour talks for CBS with men and women who in my judgement have lived long enough, thought hard enough and who express themselves well enough to give to the American audience something well beyond the usual TV fare.

We expect to do about six of these hours between now and next summer and to put them on the air Sunday evenings during the summer months.

I am beginning with Dr. Robert Hutchins and Mr. John McCloy and I have in mind, among others, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Koestler, Rebecca West, Julian Huxley and you.

These programs will be like some I have done in the past with Justices Black and Douglas, Eric Hoffer, Dean Acheson, Walter Lippmann and others. All of these had a considerable critical success and have found secondary uses in colleges and various organizations for years.

I am not in the gossip business and my role in these talks is not that of a prosecutorial investigative reporter trying to "expose" something. Nor do I turn these conversations into debates. The idea is to draw out the subject, to get if possible the best of his or her governing philosophy and current thought about the lessons of the past and the problems of modern life in both personal and collective terms. You have long given proof of a deep philosophical as well as poetic strain; you have survived and surmounted pressures and sorrows of an extraordinary nature and have somehow managed to extract creative essences from your life experience and to share them with others.

It seems to me the time has come for you to be seen and heard as well as read.

FELLINA
21 TOKENEKE TRAIL
DARIEN, CONNECTICUT 06820

June 10, 1977

Mr. Eric Sevareid
CBS News
2020 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036

Dear Mr. Sevareid:

I have just returned from Paris ("Lindbergh Day" at Le Bourget) and have been travelling so fast (for me) that I haven't been able to write you after seeing the interview, in Vermont with my daughter, on the 27th of May. It is a strange and somewhat unreal sensation to see oneself for the first time on television, but I did feel that those four hours of taping had been condensed into a most convincing, natural and absorbing conversation and that I was very fairly, honestly and kindly treated. Something unexpectedly moving came through. You were right, I think, in saying that another person was at the interview. It would not have been possible without such a perceptive and sensitive person as you at the helm. (And I would not have consented to do the interview).

Family, friends and unknowns have flooded me with enthusiastic letters about the interview. I am happiest when they say - as many do - that Charles came through more clearly than ever before. I think it will take years before some of the false images of him (some of them unconsciously of his own making; others from false facts and rumors) are dispelled and corrected, but the image is changing and I am grateful to have been a part of the change, thanks to your inspiration.

I have been meaning to write you about your book "Not So Wild a Dream", which I took to Maui to read. It is a fascinating and vivid book, but I found the recent introduction the most moving. The honesty, compassion and wisdom expressed there are qualities so needed in the world today that I hope

ERIC SEVAREID

June 23, 1977

Dear Mrs. Lindbergh,

I am so grateful for your note and so relieved that you approved the final result of our filmed conversation. I still get letters about it from viewers. A good many people have told me they regard it as the most rewarding television hour of the year. I hope it can be re-run. That could be done in an extended, hour and a half version, since we have the material for that. If only I can extract the time from the network!

I thought I should tell you that I have received a long, remarkable letter from Mrs. Lana Peters (Svetlana Stalin) in which she refers to our TV conversation in heart-felt terms. She said she sat "stunned and silent" when you had finished talking, and that your words did something very important for her: realizing what you and your husband had gone through, with all the public misunderstandings and abuse, and the final serenity with which you emerged from all that -- realizing this has produced in her, she tells me, a fresh resolve of her own and a calm and grateful acceptance of her own life and self as a "lone crusader," as, at the least, a lone, unique figure in the world.

May all go well with you. I will treasure your notes to me and, of course, the memory of our visit together.

All best,