The unexpected legacy of Connie Chung: A generation of Connies

Some public figures are honoured with namesake buildings or monuments. Veteran broadcaster Connie Chung has a strain of marijuana and hundreds of Asian American women as legacies.

Chung was contacted five years ago by a fellow journalist, Connie Wang, whose Chinese immigrant parents gave her the chance as a preschooler to pick an Americanised first name.

She thought of Connie, after the pretty woman she saw on TV, and also suggested some random cartoon characters. Her parents chose wisely.

After reaching college, Wang learned she was part of a special sorority.

There were all sorts of Asian American Connies around her, many given the name by parents who saw Chung as a smart, accomplished woman whose professional success their daughters could aspire to.

Until Wang told her this, Chung had no idea.

“I was flabbergasted,” she said. “I'm not a crybaby, and I really bawled.”

Clearly, a career in television news had a greater impact than she knew. Chung, now 78, tells stories about her life in a new memoir 10 years in the writing and on sale Tuesday, titled — what else? — “Connie.”

She dishes and names names

Chung’s career took her from Washington reporting for a fabled CBS News bureau in the 1970s through anchor jobs in Los Angeles and at NBC News and an ill-fated partnership with Dan Rather at the “CBS Evening News” in the 1990s to dodging the Barbara Walters-Diane Sawyer rivalry at ABC News.

She dishes and, yes, names names. The presidential candidate who made a pass at her. The actor who gravitated to Asian women. The male anchor (not Rather) who long held a grudge against her.

Off the air for several years now, she lives a comfortable retired life with her husband, television personality Maury Povich.

Between her absence, the Rather episode and a tarring with more of a reputation as a celebrity journalist than she ever wanted, Chung is often overlooked.

Not by Wang and other Connies. Few Asian Americans had the name before Chung and few since, but “from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, that's the Connie generation,” she said.

A frequent argument for diversity in the workplace is so young people can see themselves in prominent roles; rarely do you come across such a tangible example of its effect.

Shortly after writing about the phenomenon, Wang said she personally heard from at least 100 Connies with similar stories, likely a small sample of what's out there.

“There was quite literally no one else like her,” Wang said. “She was very professional, she was tough but also beautiful. What drew my mother to her was also her style. She cared so much about her appearance.”