My wife, Jen, and I were expecting our first child in 2013. Every reporter, every producer, every camera operator I worked with told me, “Tom, you’re going to see the world in a different way now.”
I was 33 and thought I understood quite a bit about the world. And it wasn’t just because I’d been working in newsrooms since the age of 15, when I was an intern at the local Telemundo station. I’d grown up in a tight-knit Cuban American family in Miami. My parents were immigrants, and they wanted my younger brother and me to understand what was going on back in Cuba and around the world.
The news was always on our TV—we watched broadcasts in English and Spanish. I’d wake up in the morning to café Cubano (strong, sweet Cuban coffee) and see my dad and mom reading the Miami Herald and the Spanish version, El Nuevo Herald, cover to cover before work. We would then talk about the issues of the day at the dinner table.
Though I was born in the United States, I was keenly aware that members of my family lived in another country. My parents had come to America with nothing. They’d learned English and met in high school in Miami. My dad became a dentist, and my mom, who’d studied accounting, managed his practice. I had everything I needed, but our relatives in Cuba had very little. We used to send them medicine and packets of Kool-Aid. There were often food shortages under the regime, and our relatives could mix the Kool-Aid with water and have something caloric to drink. That taught me what many children of immigrants learn: Don’t take anything for granted.
Not even something as fundamental as being able to practice your faith. My mom is from Havana, the capital, and my dad is from Banes, a small city in the east. Not long after the revolution in 1959, when Fidel Castro took over, my mom’s family fled Cuba. My dad’s family stuck it out in Banes for another six years.
Castro was transforming Cuba into a one-party Communist state that denounced religion. My dad remembers being taught in school that if you wanted to believe in something, you had to believe in the revolution. My grandparents pulled him out of school. They didn’t want him worshiping a government figure, especially a Communist. They wanted him and his sister to live in a country where people have freedom of religion, of speech, of the press and all of the other freedoms that make the United States such a special and beautiful place. They decided to flee Cuba.
When my parents married and started a family of their own, faith was woven into our lives even more deeply than the news. I went to a parochial school called Epiphany from first through sixth grade. Then from seventh grade to senior year, I went to Belen Jesuit, which has an interesting history.
The school was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba. Fidel Castro himself was a graduate. In 1961, he kicked the Jesuits out of Cuba. They came to Miami and successfully reestablished the school in Little Havana. I went on to a Jesuit college, Loyola University in New Orleans.
There are two mottoes that the Jesuits instill in their students. One is “men for others.” The other is ad majorem dei gloriam, or “for the greater glory of God.” “Men for others” goes back to the Jesuit educational philosophy of creating better citizens—people who are informed so they can have better cities, better states, better countries. You’re taught to think not just as an individual but also as someone who is part of a larger group. You think of others before yourself. You do as God would do for you.
“For the greater glory of God” means that in everything, you are inspired by God. Whatever you do, you do it in a profound way, with your heart and mind and soul.
I saw that imperative in Leo Williams, who taught public speaking and drama and coached the speech and debate team at Belen. Leo taught me how to speak in public. He devoted time after school and on weekends preparing our team for speech and debate tournaments. I developed confidence as a speaker and learned how to handle a complex subject and deliver it to an audience. Maybe God was preparing me for what he would call me to do as a career.
Mom and Dad worked incredibly hard to provide for my brother and me, and they held us to the same standard. I was expected to give my best in everything I did, but one summer morning in high school, I decided to skip work. I’d stayed out late with my friends the night before and was tired, so I told my mom I was going to call out sick.
She gave me a look. The look. “You’re not sick.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m there or not,” I said. “I’m just an intern.”
“We don’t do that in this house,” she said. “When people give you a job, you show up.” You bet I went to work that morning.
When I landed that first news internship, I was only 15 and couldn’t drive yet, so my mom took me to the Telemundo station every day. My parents have watched every broadcast I’ve ever done, from my reporting on local politics for Miami’s NBC affiliate, WTVJ, to when I started anchoring Top Story and NBC Nightly News. I usually call them on my way home from work, and I’ll get the lowdown on what they thought of that night’s broadcast. I joke that they’re my built-in Nielsen ratings group. I want to make them proud of everything I do.
The magnitude of my parents’ love for me… I didn’t truly understand it until Jen and I had our first child, our daughter Malena, in the spring of 2013. I felt a selfless, all-encompassing love that I hadn’t known was possible. I knew I would do everything in my power to give my daughter the best life and help her become the person the Lord meant for her to be. This must have been what my parents felt, and my grandparents before them, giving up everything they knew in Cuba to come to a country where they didn’t speak the language, all to give their children a chance at a better, brighter future.
from bottom center): Tomas, Juliette, Malena, Jen and Tom
As the father of three children—Malena, Juliette and Tomas—I now look at the world much differently, with a deeper sense of responsibility professionally and personally. My colleagues were right. Every tough news story affects me, but anytime there’s a story in which children are suffering—because of a war or a natural disaster, for example—I can’t help but imagine how parents in those situations feel.
Jen is a former news executive producer, and so as my parents did with me and my brother, we try our best to discuss current events with our kids, including when I might be called away on assignment. This can mean missing family events like Malena’s school play, Juliette’s gymnastics meet or Tomas’s birthday, which happened in October 2023 and again last October, when a ceasefire agreement was reached in Gaza after two years of war between Israel and Hamas.
“Last time I was away for your birthday because of a war,” I told Tomas. “This time, it’s better news.”
“It is?”
“Yes, because there’s a chance at peace,” I said. “That’s a big deal, and my job is to help tell people’s stories.”
Tomas stopped crying and nodded slowly. I gave him a hug and prayed this would stick with him the way sending medicine and Kool-Aid to relatives in Cuba had stuck with me, engendering empathy for those in need.
Sadly, I often meet people on the worst day of their lives. I’ve interviewed kids who have lost their parents and parents who have lost their children. Part of my job is to help tell their stories so they aren’t forgotten. But I get to come home to my family. Many of the people I’ve interviewed don’t have such a good option, and that can haunt me long after I’ve gone on to the next story.
It is one of the reasons I go to God, to pray for those I’ve met. I pray throughout the day. I wake up with a prayer. I go to bed with a prayer. I pray with my kids. I pray for the people whose stories I’ve told. If I can take a break, I’ll read the daily devotional Streams in the Desert. Sometimes I’ll go to lunchtime Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, right across the street from the NBC studios at 30 Rock.
If I’m far away from my family covering a story, especially something that could be dangerous, I’ll remind myself of one of my favorite Scriptures: “And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone….”
Reminding myself that God’s love is with me, I stay hopeful, anchored in my faith. I believe that no matter what the day brings, God is with us. Nowhere in Scripture or in any religion that I know of does it say that things are always going to be easy. Quite the opposite. But as my parents showed me, life is about facing adversity with optimism and strength, doing all that I can do for the love of others and for the greater glory of God.
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