Mourners pay final respects to Arledge

NEW YORK -- Colleagues, politicians and celebrities filled majestic St. Bartholomew's Church on Monday to pay final tribute to ABC News chairman Roone Arledge.

"I'm not sure I really trust myself to try to tell you everything Roone meant to me," ABC "20/20" correspondent Diane Sawyer told mourners.

"But the biggest surprise to me last Friday morning was the silence in the universe and the place where I used to hear Roone thinking," she said. "I never noticed that he was the global positioning system."

Arledge, who died Thursday of complications from cancer at 71, created such shows as "Monday Night Football" and "Nightline." The 36-time Emmy winner was cited as one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine in 1990.

Other ABC figures, including Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and Barbara Walters, also spoke warmly of their former boss.

"Some reunion," said Jennings, looking out at the vast church where every pew was occupied. "The man was no saint, but look around you. Had Roone not been as interesting, compelling and complicated, surely not that many of us would be here."

Arledge "made life and work so exciting," Jennings said. "He made everything seem so possible."

Jennings recalled that during the 1972 Munich Olympics, Arledge asked him his shoe size. When Jennings wanted to know why, Arledge said he was ordering Gucci shoes for the staff. He sent an employee to pick up the shoes -- not to a local store in Munich, but to Italy.

"He never did anything halfway," Jennings said.

Jennings also told of visiting Arledge recently in the hospital, and in the middle of their conversation, his old boss said, "Good putt."

It was then Jennings realized that Arledge had the TV on and was commenting on the golf match playing on it.

Arledge was an industry pioneer who ushered in the era of prime-time sports, mentored top broadcasters and developed new ways to present the news.

After bringing modern production techniques like slow-motion instant replay to sports coverage, Arledge built ABC News into a power during the 1980s. For a decade, he was president of both the network's sports and news divisions.