A Date With Destiny

For Leon Harris, the path to local glory on the small screen began in college with a noble pursuit that had nothing to do with television.

He was chasing a babe.

"I can tell you the date," recalled Harris, 45. "It was May 8th of 1982."

Now he's the lead talking head on WJLA (Channel 7) and has just won the local Emmy as Washington's best news anchor. A quarter-century ago, he was just an Ohio University junior who was "absolutely in love with" an upperclassman.

His idea of a great date was taking her to a communications conference.

"I was trying to impress her," he recalled. "You don't take her uptown to go to the pub. You say, 'Hey, how about going to check out the keynote at the communications week conference?' "

You will be shocked to learn that eternal love was not served by that particular experience.

But it did launch his career.

On that day, Ted Turner gave a talk about his fledgling network CNN (or the "Chicken Noodle Network," as it was known then).

Harris was impressed, and he later landed a summer internship with CNN in Atlanta. He ended up sharing a "little quadrant of cubicles" with fellow newbie Katie Couric.

Harris joined the network full time the next year and went from cameraman to circuit-and-satellite-man to on-air talent in 1992. He spent his remaining years there as an anchor but wound up bouncing around the schedule one too many times for his liking.

"You could bust your butt and . . . if you didn't have the right last name, it didn't matter," he said.

So, he moved here with his wife, Dawn, whom he dated in college after the Ted-Turner-date romance fizzled out, and two children, Darren and Lauren, to join WJLA.

The switch was the result of a four-year courtship by station executives, and he accepted, with trepidation.

"Local television is distinctly different from national TV," Harris said. "The microscope is so much more powerful locally, because people who watch you live near you."

In his three years in Washington, he has become involved with For Love of Children, a charity that provides educational services to high-risk children. He was raised by his mother after his father left when he was 4.

Harris said he thinks people in Washington "take themselves too seriously," but "it's the prettiest place I've ever lived." He loves the daily commute from his Potomac home to the station's Rosslyn studio, where he co-anchors the 5 and 11 p.m. newscasts.

"I've got to pinch myself and say, 'God almighty, a poor boy from Akron, Ohio, driving down this to go to work,' " he said.

-- John Maynard