STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Our colleague Barry Gordemer is retiring. He's a senior producer, which means you normally don't hear him, but he's worked with every person who ever hosted this program. Often, it's been a story that seems really off-beat. When I got together with my brother to fry a turkey last Christmas, that was a Barry Gordemer production.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
BRUCE INSKEEP: You do a gradual dip, so you put it in.
S INSKEEP: You're holding it by a handle. OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF TURKEY FRYING)
S INSKEEP: Slowly.
(SOUNDBITE OF TURKEY FRYING)
S INSKEEP: Slowly - oh, the steam coming off of that is amazing.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Now, Barry has cooked with me in my kitchen for cooking segments. We've interviewed comedians and musicians, but he's also got a knack for the serious and for the difficult, like when he gathered the stories of people whose lives were forever changed by the war in Iraq. This is Mohammed Dulaimi, who came across a family shot on the highway. Only the child survived.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
MOHAMMED DULAIMI: And he said, please, I don't want to be an orphan. If they are dead, let me die. And that was my first lie in my life. And he said, swear by God they are alive. And I did.
FADEL: Barry has this brilliant ability to get to the heart of a conversation and to know when the words speak for themselves or when it's time to bring in the sound of what is being described.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now, I didn't get to work with Barry as often as I would have liked, but I did get to travel with him on some important stories from the field. We filed stories from hotel rooms. He taught me how to use an ironing board as a desk...
S INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MARTIN: ...Because it muffles the sound.
S INSKEEP: OK.
MARTIN: It has to be said. And he found out little quirks about us, like when A Martínez confessed to Barry that he is - and this is true - afraid of butterflies. Now, A is on vacation, but he left this voice memo.
A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: Now, after an appropriate amount of making fun of me, which he did, we set out to do an interview by a river.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
JIM WHITE: We should not be standing where we are right now.
MARTÍNEZ: OK.
WHITE: We're standing in the river bed.
MARTÍNEZ: And I was talking to the guest, I could see out of the corner of my eye that there was a lot of butterflies that are on the way to my location. And I remember seeing Barry kind of walk in front of the butterflies to alter their path, and they flew in the other direction.
MARTIN: Oh, now, some people would take a bullet for you. Barry Gordemer would take a butterfly.
S INSKEEP: That's the job. If you've heard something artful on this program, there's a good chance that it came from Barry or from some younger producer Barry mentored over the decades, but you rarely heard his voice, though there was a time we heard him talking about characters in movies whose dialogue is impossible to hear. He referenced the 2014 thriller "Gone Girl."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
BARRY GORDEMER, BYLINE: There's a scene where Ben Affleck's character is flirting at a dinner party.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GONE GIRL")
BEN AFFLECK: (As Nick Dunne) I happen to be a charter subscriber to the Middling Warlord Weekly, so I'd recognize you.
GORDEMER: I couldn't understand a word he said, and I started to feel like the two old guys in the "Muppet Show" balcony.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE MUPPET SHOW")
JIM HENSON: (As Waldorf) Well, I've finally got my hearing aid working.
RICHARD HUNT: (As Statler) Hm? Speak up. My hearing aid's not working.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: OK, it's entirely fitting that we heard the Muppets there, because Barry Gordemer contains multitudes. He has a pretty amazing side hustle making puppets. He once made the puppets for a program called "Animal Planet News."
S INSKEEP: The puppets were gnus, G-N-U-S. Animals - gnus - with the news. Another show featured his puppet of NPR's Cokie Roberts. Although, for some reason, no video program has picked up the Steve Inskeep puppet that he made of me holding a microphone.
MARTIN: And mine, which has a hat and...
S INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MARTIN: ...The right number of earrings.
S INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MARTIN: Covering the news is a long-term adventure. You show up day by day, and you do two things. You have to keep learning and never lose your sense of humor.
FADEL: For almost 40 years, Barry Gordemer has done both.
S INSKEEP: Thanks, Barry.
FADEL: Thanks, Barry.
MARTIN: Thanks, Barry.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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