Were it not for the Ku Klux Klan, the Kladstrup's might never have gotten to France.

They had just moved to Los Angeles. That was in 1977. Don was a correspondent for CBS News in New York when a plum job in the Los Angeles bureau opened up. When the spot was offered to him, he took it.

Nine months later, the telephone rang. It was Don's boss, Bill Small, senior vice president of CBS News, calling. "How would you like to move to Hong Kong?" he asked. Small knew of their interest in East Asia, knew we had gone to school there and dreamed of working there as journalists someday. "I also know your two daughters are serious musicians so if you need to fly there in advance to find good teachers, we'll take care of the expenses." He was confident Don would jump at the offer.

Don was blown away. After thanking Small profusely, he was lost for words. "I don't know what to say, Bill. I'd love to go but we just got here. We just bought a house and haven't even finished unpacking; our kids are in school and …" but before Don could go any further Small jumped in. "Look, I'm coming to LA in a couple of weeks. You can give me your final answer then."

For the next two weeks, Don was a nervous wreck, unsure how to handle the matter, but finally the day arrived. "So what's your decision?" Small asked. Don swallowed hard. He'd been with CBS less than two years. Turning down a generous offer like Hong Kong could be a career-breaker, but that's what Don did. With the Vietnam War winding down, there wasn't much news to cover in that part of the world. CBS had already pulled the plug on its Bangkok bureau and moved the correspondent to Hong Kong which made two there. Adding Don would make it three with hardly any news to cover. "I'm sorry Bill. I wish I could accept but the timing is bad. Most of all, I'm reluctant to uproot my family again just as everyone was settling in." Don braced himself and waited for Small's reply.

Without missing a beat, Small replied, "Okay, how about Paris?" Don nearly fainted. That evening after work—and one or six drinks with his colleagues—Don returned home and said to Petie, "I think I just agreed to move to Paris."

So how did the Ku Klux Klan figure into all of this? What the Kladstrup's didn't know back then was that another correspondent had been tapped for Paris. Before heading off, however, she was assigned to cover a Klan rally in Atlanta. The rally turned into mayhem when someone drove a car into the crowd, severely injuring a number of people, among them the correspondent. Unable to work, the Paris job went to Don.

And so, after nearly fifty years, here they still are. It took some doing, though. After seven years, CBS, under new management, decided they wanted Don to fill an opening in Chicago. Don said he preferred to stay where he was. Tough, CBS replied, we want you back anyway. Don refused to go. When the bureau chief of ABC—a fellow named Pierre Salinger who had been President Kennedy's press secretary—heard what was going on, he telephoned Don immediately. "If you want to stay in Paris, come work for us," he said. That's what Don did.

During his time with ABC, Don covered a wide range of stories: the fall of the Berlin Wall; wars in the Middle East; revolutions in Iran and Afghanistan; famine and civil war in Somalia; the battle against apartheid in South Africa. South Africa, in fact, was where they moved for a couple of years when Nelson Mandela was about to be released from prison.

But after 25 years of constant travel and midnight calls from New York telling him to beat it to the airport and catch the next flight to God knows where, everything began to wear. In 1995, when ABC asked him to move to Israel, Don hesitated, then turned it down. It would have been their third move and third continent in three years. They needed a change, a complete break, realizing that if they were ever going to do something different with their lives, now was the time.

France seemed like the perfect place. In some ways, after living there for so many years, it felt more like home to the couple than the United States. Their children had grown up there, plus they owned a house in Normandy not far from the D-Day landing beaches, part of an 18th century farm which was bought shortly after their arrival in France in 1978. And so they took the plunge.

Those first few months were exhilarating. It was everything you read about in paeans to the French countryside. They were close to nature, there were wonderful markets bursting with fresh produce, and an endless list of historic places to see. They awoke in the morning to birdsong and went to sleep at night serenaded by frogs in our pond.

It was perfect—except for one thing. Nothing else was happening. The phone wasn't ringing and that nice pay check was no longer coming in. The world kept turning and big events kept happening but they were no longer part of it. All of their great ideas for things they were going to do once free of the regular grind went nowhere. Let's face it: they were bored.

"What are we going to do?" Don said. Petie, who'd been a reporter for several newspapers as well as an assistant to the U.S. ambassador for UNESCO, thought about it for a moment, then said, "Well, we've always dreamed of writing a book. Why don't we give it a try?"

And that's what they've been doing ever since.