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Freeman, who has a maxim for everything, likes to say, "One of the great things about life is to keep movin' and not hurry, and that's largely a matter of schedulin' your day." To run on his timetable, not only Freeman himself but everyone about him has to keep moving. He gets up early—really early. He is up at 2:30, after five or six hours' sleep. (Back in 1940 his rising hour was 4:30, but, says Freeman, "the temptation always is to sneak up a few minutes earlier.") Every activity of his day is timed to the minute, often to the second. The time allotted for cooking breakfast (an egg, toast, Thermos coffee): two minutes, 40 seconds.
Freeman eats his breakfast slowly (he never hurries anything) then allows 17 minutes for the 4.7-mile trip to the News Leader building in the heart of Richmond, and that's what it takes. As he rolls past the handsome statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, he gravely raises right hand to forehead in salute to the "great gentleman" whom he considers the finest man the South has produced. "I shall never fail to do that as long as I live."
By 3:15 a.m. Freeman is in his air-conditioned office, reading the morning Times-Dispatch (15 minutes). Then, turning to his typewriter, he pecks out his' daily two columns of editorials. He is done by 6, takes 40 minutes for longhand revisions, then jots down a few notes for his 8 a.m. broadcast. At 6:55 he plunges into the life & times of George Washington, writing in a clear, small hand on white, unlined paper. Freeman has three synchronized clocks in his office placed to catch his eye from any position (over one of them stands the stern sign: "Time is irreplaceable. Waste it not").
At 7:55 he drops George Washington abruptly, goes downstairs into the newsroom to pick up notes on the latest news, then crosses a catwalk to a studio in radio station WRNL (owned by the Richmond newspapers). Frequently the announcer is hopefully saying, "And now Dr. Freeman," just as he sticks his head in the door.
Regardless of the weather, Freeman always starts by saying it's a fine morning. Then, with time out for a sponsor's message about mayonnaise, he drawls glibly without script for 15 minutes. Sometimes he announces that there is no news worth mentioning, advises people not to buy a paper that day. From politics, war, or a headlined disaster he may slip into a spiel on Southern cooking: "Where you go'n' to find better cookin' than in your own Virginia? Provided, of course, you use enough corn bread, and enough bacon in cookin' your vegetables." Even some Richmonders who profess to be fed up with his sagelike utterances and sweet-talkin' voice admit that they listen anyhow.