A Homecoming

Instead of finding stories as most reporters do, CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman uses a highly sophisticated piece of newsgathering equipment: a dart. He asks a person on the street to throw a dart at a map to help him choose where he'll go next in search of a story. Once there, he picks a subject at random from the phone book. The premise is that "Everybody Has a Story." In Parke County, Ind., he heard James Cottrell's.

Cottrell is a retired Navy officer who, despite his history of barking orders and having people listen to him, is the first to admit that "these kids don't pay attention to anything."

He quit the Navy 20 years ago at the pinnacle of his career. This story is about the road that led him from there to here.

Cottrell grew up in a ready-made farm family, just add pitchfork. But it wasn't for him. He left when he was 17. He met his wife, Judy, and together they traveled the world.

Then one day, that old man in the overalls, his dad, made his feelings known. He wanted his boy home to help out on the farm, maybe get a school bus route, he said. Of course, most kids would have said no. But this one packed his duffel and, at the age of 50, did what Dad said.

Explains Cottrell, "He was not only my father. He was my best friend."

Eight years came and went. Then, recalls, Cotrell, one day, "My wife came flying up the lane and said, 'your dad's had a heart attack. I think he's gone.' So we went to town, and they were loading him in the ambulance out of the doctor's office, and it hurt."

It hurt for a long while. "I don't know why it hit me so hard, other than the fact that we were together all the time, you know, doing things and I missed that. A lot," he says.

He battled depression for months but came out of it with a greater respect for things he didn't always appreciate when he was younger, like parents, like covered bridges.

"You drive hundreds of miles to go look at something in some other state, and you've got the same thing at home, and you don't even realize it," he says.

That could apply not only to points of interest, but people, too. We leave home to meet new friends. And yet, the best friends you'll ever know are the ones you've known all your life. A lot of folks figure that out at funerals, but Cottrell is smarter than most. Hfigured it out eight great years earlier.

"Just remember this thought - the telephone does a wonderful thing, or email, or however you choose to contact your parents," he says. "I think that's not a bad idea. Once in a while, just say, 'Hi, Dad. I want to say hi'."

And on that note, especially, kids would be wise to listen to the bus driver.

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