While Barbara Walters is celebrated for her pioneering career, the veteran broadcaster once revealed she hoped one of the lasting legacies she’d leave behind after her death was her that of “a mother.”
Back in her 2014 ABC retirement special Barbara Walters: Her Story, Walters reflected on motherhood and how she wanted to be remembered by daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber.
“Oh, this is the toughest question,” she admitted. “I want to be remembered by my daughter as a good and loving mother.”
She continued, “I want to be remembered by my friends as somebody who was loyal; I want to be remembered in television, maybe as a creator, maybe as a good newswoman.”
She summed up, “No, more than being remembered, I hope that by younger women, I can help them aspire.”
Walters adopted Jacqueline, 54, as a newborn in 1968 with her second husband, theater producer Lee Guber, to whom Walters was married from 1963 to 1967.
“I very much wanted to have a child,” Walters said. “I had three miscarriages, and finally, my husband Lee Guber and I adopted a baby girl. I knew that my sister was never going to be married and have a child, and I wanted her to have part of the joy that I had. And so, I named my daughter Jacqueline after my sister.”
Walters has said that her older sister Jacqueline, who died of ovarian cancer in 1985, was “developmentally challenged.”
Walters explained in 2014’s Her Story why her only child has mostly stayed out of the spotlight over the years: “Jackie has found it difficult all her life because she wants to be anonymous, she just doesn’t like to be a celebrity. She may be the only one in the world who doesn’t like to be a celebrity.”
Walters said of the challenge that came with balancing her family and career, “I think everybody who works, not just someone who’s in television, not just a celebrity, faces a balancing act… There’s no answer, you do your best.”
“I look back and I think, ‘I wish I had been with her more.’ I was so busy with the career,” Walters admitted. “It’s the age-old problem; on your deathbed, are you going to say, ‘I wish I spent more time in the office’? No, you’ll say, ‘I wish I spent more time with my family.’ And I do feel that way, I wish I had spent more time with my Jackie.”
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