Tom Sawyer Storey’s Reaching for the Sky reads as a personal record of a changing Los Angeles, told through the life of a man who was born in Hollywood, served at sea, and later reported the city’s traffic and breaking news from above. The manuscript is built around one recurring idea: the course of a life can turn on timing, accident, advice, and the courage to step through an unexpected door.
Storey starts before he was born, in 1941, when James Fitzgerald, the youth who was connected to Storey’s mother, Mary Virginia, was killed in a crash near Hollywood. The book mingles family history with LA history, inviting readers to a city that is still shaped by early freeways, hotels, movie hopefuls, and chance encounters. The opening is the structure for the memoir. Storey isn’t just reporting what happened. He is looking into the distance between two lives that are so close.
This theme persists throughout his father’s time in World War II. Storey says two transport convoys were missed, and his parents had the time to give him, as he was born in 1944. Later, his father served in the Pacific and came home underweight and sick from the war and illness. These passages add weight to the book, as it were. The memoir is more than just about broadcasting. It’s also a story about the families created under duress, wartime children, and postwar Los Angeles, which grew to the San Fernando Valley.
Storey’s childhood chapters depict a place in transition. Hollywood fades out, giving way to open land, new housing developments, drive-in theaters, Cold War drills, smog, family cars, and the advent of television. The tone is still observational, and the author’s memory is being used to record social change. The purpose of a lost child story on Hollywood Boulevard, of a family relocating to the Valley, and of a child’s encounter with the Bakersfield earthquake is the same. They bring everyday family life into the context of Southern California’s history.
When he was seventeen, he followed in his father’s footsteps and enlisted in the United States Navy. His service involved tours in San Diego, to Hawaii, to the Philippines, and to the Gulf of Tonkin. In 1965, he tells of Yankee Station, where a young sailor finds himself near the growing Vietnam War in America. He talks about the flying experiences, carrier routines, and how he would find himself in an unknown place, Vietnam, which would become the main part of his experience. The best chapters are the ones that compare youthful expectations with military duty.
Storey’s life changed after his time in the Navy. His mother directed him to a radio class, which replaced a plan to teach. This idea was transformed into a profession. He studied radio, attended the Don Martin School of Radio and Television Arts and Sciences in Hollywood, and got his first radio job at KJOI in Beverly Hills in 1974. The middle chapters of the memoir are about the not so glamorous parts of being in the media: format changes, being fired more than once, driving home with a final paycheck, periods of unemployment, new auditions, weekend jobs, and the necessity to adapt. Storey makes clear that his life was not perfect. His career had many highs, but it also carried uncertainty, disappointment, and the pressure of providing for his family while trying to stay in a competitive broadcasting market.
Airborne reporting was the most unique chapter of Storey’s career. For seventeen years, he covered traffic and broke news in Southern California with Shadow Broadcasting, Metro/Shadow, KFWB News 980, K-Earth 101 FM, Arrow 93 FM, KLSX, KMPC, and others. As viewed from the air, LA is a map of freeways, fires, cops, and commuters’ aggravation. Storey’s opinion was practical and near. He was required to communicate to drivers what was important as events were happening.
The memoir has news value because of the Northridge earthquake, Malibu fires, freeway closures, and major emergency scenes. This is a book written by someone who witnessed the city in trouble and needed to capture it in a clear, rapid, and responsible manner. Even if the story is personal, that discipline adds a journalistic spine to the book.
Reaching for the Sky closes as a record of service, reinvention, and memory. Storey retired from his role as an airborne news and traffic reporter in 2009. Since that “retirement,” he has enjoyed yet another career as an actor and voiceover artist with an Internet satirical news show. The memoir is also strengthened by more than 150 color photos, which add visual depth to Storey’s story and help readers connect with the people, places, aircraft, broadcasts, and family moments that shaped his life. The message is clear: it is never too late to take on another career. The larger achievement is the one the memoir quietly argues for throughout: a life is worth preserving because it also preserves the places, people, and turning points that shaped it for future generations everywhere.
