The Day I Died

In 1987 Barbree, NBC radio and TV correspondent at Cape Canaveral-Kennedy for 30 years, collapsed while jogging on the sands of Cocoa Beach. He had no heartbeat; EMTs helped keep oxygen flowing to his brain and eventually he was revived, or brought back from the dead, as Barbree puts it. His heart was found to be all right, but his arteries were impaired and he required bypass surgery. This account of Barbree's coronary battles will interest those with like problems, but of more general appeal are his re-creations of national events, his vivid accounts of the early astronauts and of the Freedom Riders in Georgia and Alabama in the 1960s. (Nov.)