"I was wandering around Europe in 1967," he explains. "I had a pregnant wife, and I suddenly realized I had to make a living."

Range, who had graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in German, was hired by Time magazine as a stringer in Berlin. His career began covering the student uprisings in Berlin in June of 1967.

"I stood only about 20 or 40 feet away from a student named Benno Ohnesorg, who was killed by a policeman," he recalls of his early days as a correspondent.

"I was only a few years older than the students, so naturally I related very strongly to what they were doing," says Range, himself a "veteran" of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty.

Since then, Range has served as White House correspondent for U.S. News and World Report and as senior articles editor for Playboy.

Although Range had been back to Germany since his work there as a reporter, his first return visit to Berlin itself came only a month before the wall fell.

"Nothing had changed in 19 years," Range says. "It was still very scary. There were secret police everywhere."

Range also had the opportunity to return again to Berlin a month or two after the wall was torn down. "I felt very emotional because it's just a great city, but it was a city that broke your heart because of that wall," says Range, who first visited Berlin as a college student only three months after the wall was constructed.

Sharing Experiences

In his study group, Range has been applying his experience with overseas reporting to deflate romantic notions of the allegedly glamorous lives of foreign correspondents.

"My romantic model before I became a journalist was Hemingway in Paris--work a couple of hours in the morning, drinks before lunch, long nap in the afternoon and dinner with lots of friends," says Range.

Although Range says he soon found out that being a foreign correspondent involved more hard work than romantic adventure, its appeal is not completely unfounded.

"You do have a ringside seat to history, and you do have exciting people to talk to," he says.

In addition, Range's career has allowed him to do one of the things he loves best--travel. In addition to working for Time in Berlin and Saigon, Range spent many years freelancing--a job which took him on several trips to Europe and Japan and on one commercial assignment around the world.

"I love foreign cultures. I love foreign languages," says Range, who speaks French and German. "I don't like to travel as a tourist. I like to travel as a journalist because it's your job then to become expert about wherever you are."

Among Range's other passions are spending time with his two sons, playing tennis, reading and cooking. And he is quick to add that he cooks a mean pecan pie