Deborah Norville returns to Dalton for book signing

By Jamie Jones

Welcome home, Debbie.

A crowd of more than 360 greeted Deborah Norville, a noted broadcast journalist and anchor of the television news magazine show “Inside Edition,” as she returned to her native Dalton on Thursday as part of the Leadership Dalton-Whitfield Alumni Association’s “Share the Vision” breakfast. Norville said she’s given dozens of speeches across the country, including to a packed basketball arena of 21,000, but speaking in her hometown held special meaning.

“This is different because it’s the people that you know and love,” said Norville. “They know your history, they know your family. Anything you say is going to reverberate more loudly because of that familiarity.”

And Norville’s talk was full of nostalgia.

She recalled childhood days in Dalton with her three sisters. There were trips to The Green Spot to gobble up as much candy as she could get for a quarter. There were days listening from her parent’s home on Thornton Avenue to the Dalton High School marching band play “Dixie.” There were memories of preparing for the state Junior Miss pageant and the help she received from several local residents.

Her 40-minute speech was equal parts humorous, self-deprecating and, to some in the audience, inspiring. Norville gave attendees bits of wisdom gleaned from a somewhat topsy-turvy television career, and she ended up with an armful of gifts.

A key to the city from Mayor David Pennington (a former neighbor of the Norville family), a proclamation from the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners declaring Thursday “Deborah Norville Day” and a package of area goodies were the tangible presents. But perhaps the most thrilling surprise was a visit by the members of the Dalton High School marching band who serenaded Norville with the school’s fight song and a rousing chorus of “Go, Big Red.”

“I can see the cool kids are still in the band,” remarked Norville, who performed with the school’s flag line and also played the flute when she attended Dalton High.

After those days in the band, Norville went off to college and started at the bottom of the journalism rung. While she was still attending the University of Georgia, she took an unpaid internship at WAGA in Atlanta and eventually snagged a weekend reporting job there. That led to a full-time job as a reporter.

After stops in Chicago and New York City, Norville filled in on NBC’s “The Today Show” before being tabbed to replace Jane Pauley as the show’s co-host. But the limelight wasn’t always sweet. Some fans of the show and some fellow media members resented the younger Norville replacing such a popular and established host. The tabloids plastered allegations of an affair with the head of NBC as the real reason she was promoted.

“It was the beginning of a water torture of press stories that would serve to completely trash my reputation which up to that point had been sterling, and to totally torpedo any self-confidence I had built up over the nine or 10 years I had been working as a reporter,” Norville said. “During that period of time the stories got worse and worse. And maybe the worst was the woman at TV Guide who coined the word. She said to be ‘Norvilled’ meant to be unfairly ousted from your job. I’m like, ‘Baby, why don’t you come down to Dalton, Ga., and let us deal with you here? Take your last name, put an ‘ed’ at the end of it and make a pejorative verb out it.’ How dare she!”

She asked her father, Zack, for advice.

“‘Debbie, why don’t you just come home and get away from those damn Yankees?’” he asked.

But after leaving “The Today Show” and a short absence from the television airwaves, Norville bounced back as the anchor of “Inside Edition” in 1995.

Norville also spoke about the lessons she learned from writing her latest book, “Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You.” The book takes a scientific approach to how a grateful life can improve your well-being.

“The fundamental difference between ‘Thank You Power’ and the other stuff that is out is they are the power of positive thinking,” Norville said. “‘Thank You Power’ is the power of doing. ‘Thank You Power’ is not sitting there and thinking.”

One of the main parts of “doing” is each day writing down three things that make you feel grateful. Norville said her trip back to Dalton would definitely make Thursday’s list.

Norville was a hit with many in the crowd.

“I really enjoyed it,” said Jamie Upton, an employee at Cohutta Banking Co. who, like Norville, grew up in Dalton. “I’ve seen her on TV so many times but never had a chance to meet her. It was just neat to hear about her growing up in Dalton.”

But Norville couldn’t escape some of the slightly embarrassing anecdotes that came from being raised in a small town. One story was told by Shaw Industries founder Robert E. “Bob” Shaw, who has known Norville since she was a child.

“The only thing I remember about Deborah — or Debbie as we always called her — was my daughter, Susan, and Debbie, they had one problem that they faced together,” Shaw said. “It happened to be contact lenses. Back in those days, you had hard contacts and they wouldn’t let you put contacts in until you got to be a certain age. And believe me, if you had thick glasses, like my daughter and Debbie had, it was a disadvantage in getting dates. But the soft contact came along and Debbie flourished and became what she is today.”

Sister Cathy Amos helped arrange Norville’s trip home and summed up her sibling by saying, “She became probably more than any of us could have imagined.”