CBS Newsroom Welcomes Injured Reporter
Eight months after nearly dying from a car bomb that killed four people in Iraq, CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier returned to the network's newsroom in New York, where she was greeted with cheers and hugs by coworkers.
"You've been in the thoughts and prayers of everyone in this room and throughout the world," said Rome Hartman, executive producer for the CBS Evening News. "We can't wait to get you back on TV."
Dozier was critically wounded on May 29, 2006, while reporting a story in Iraq. The blast killed her camera crew — Britons Paul Douglas and James Brolan — as well as a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi translator.
"It's overwhelming," said Dozier, as some 100 colleagues gathered around. "Last May we had Hell open on us. That's when I found out what this place was really like. People I didn't know reached out to me, to my family, and also reached out to the families of Paul and James.
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"Paul and James will always be in my memories … a final salute to them."
Dozier told her colleagues she is preparing for what she hopes is a "final round" of surgery next week to repair a destroyed right ear drum and a correction in her legs.
"I hate hospitals,'' she said. "I hated them before and now I really hate them."
In a piece she wrote last month for CBSNews.com, Dozier described the arduous road back – both spiritual and physical – from injuries to her head and legs.
"These months later, I know the pain must be as sharp and devastating as it was that day for the families of cameraman Paul Douglas, soundman James Brolan, 4th Infantry Division Capt. James Funkhouser and his Iraqi translator — all lost in an instant, killed by an act of evil,'' she wrote.
"In the mornings when I wake and fight to work off the stiffness in my legs to stand, I remember it all too clearly. And then, thank God that I am here to remember it, and wish again my friends were here too."
Dozier has not set a firm timetable to return to the network. She said she has been doing "therapeutic writing" about the events before and after the car bomb blast.
"We've all waited for this moment for a long time," said CBS News and Sports president Sean McManus. "So Kimberly, welcome back to your home."