Mike Wallace's good deed after a Jerusalem terror attack

The ’60 Minutes’ reporter, who died Sunday, responded like a ‘mensch’ to a Hebrew University bombing, a former student recalls

Mike Wallace’s death on Sunday has inspired lots of talk about the CBS reporter, best known for his long and distinguished career on “60 Minutes.” But for one New York resident, Wallace’s passing rekindled memories of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem — and his role in calming the fears of her Jewish family.

In a piece for the Awl, Ellen Klausner recalls a bombing that took place at Hebrew University in 1968, when she was an American student on an exchange program. Long before the Internet, the young Klausner worried about how her family would react to news of the attack, and was reassured when Wallace — on the scene for CBS — took down her family’s number and promised to call on her behalf when he returned to New York. “He then directed his crew to include me in the slow pan of students, so that in this week’s edition of ’60 Minutes,’ my parents could see me and know I was okay,” she writes.

This memory, Klausner says, “will always make me think of him as a mensch.”