NPR, BBC Media Executive and Glencoe Native Talks Community, Career and Culture

On any given day, you might catch Dick Meyer daydreaming about his hometown: Glencoe, Ill.

As he transitions from his former post as executive editor at NPR News to his new role as executive producer of BBC News, America, Meyer looks back at his roots.

"I miss what I would have had if I was in Chicago or in the North Shore now, every day," said Meyer, 53, in a phone interview during his last week at NPR News. His final day at NPR was Dec. 9.

Dubbing his experience as a "Leave It to Beaver" childhood, the Washington D.C. resident said he craves Glencoe's organic community.

Meyer spent most of his childhood on Maple Hill Road in a house that his sister maintains today. He attended which honored him this fall as an outstanding alumnus with the Francis R. Stanton Recognition.

The producer, director and editor has led top media companies in the U.S. He move up the ranks at CBS News, took the reins as NPR News as executive editor in 2009 and will shift to BBC News, America in 2012.

Meyer's 2008 book "Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium" (Random House, $24.95), critiques modern society and argues that Americans have developed a deep disrespect for cultural institutions in public and civic life since his upbringing in Glencoe.

"For me, it was completely idyllic," said Meyer, and points to Glencoe as an example of the close-knit community missing in American culture today.

"I'm sometimes accused of being nostalgic, or politically and socially naive," he said. "Glencoe was a fairly homogeneous, wealthy community."

He noted that the North Shore has changed dramatically since his time there. "It's a more ostentatious and materialistic place than it was in the 1950s-1960s. Like much of America, a drive down Sheridan Road today doesn't resemble a drive in the 1970s."

"Nonetheless, it had a lot of virtues hard to find in America."

Meyer's Glencoe was one of independence, freedom and family, where local business owners could keep an eye on children around town, everyone knew your parents, and character traits moved through family generations like good, old-fashioned tradition.

"There were two rules: I had to go to school and I had to be home at 6:30 p.m. for dinner with my hands washed," he said.

But Meyer never spent his adult life in Chicago, or the North Shore specifically. "It was the worst non-decision in my life," Meyer said.

"Like most people, I went away for college ... [years later] my career was flourishing, and I looked up, and all my family was in Chicago. I never made the decision to consciously go away from my family; it was a bunch of decisions not made in the whole."

Meyer looked into relocating to Chicago, but decided the career sacrifice was too substantial.

"I don't know if that was the right decision, but we [my wife and I] both have marvelous careers and our kids have developed community in D.C."

Meyer starts his new job with BBC News, America in February 2012, according to BBC Media Centre.

"Like" Winnetka-Glencoe Patch on Facebook.