Gail Shister | Constitution always dear, and very near, to Jennings

Peter Jennings

didn't just love the Constitution. It was part of his wardrobe.

The late ABC anchor - Canadian by birth, American by choice - revered the archival document so much that he kept a copy in his back pocket.

"He had a million of them," says his widow, independent producer Kayce Freed Jennings. He loved to hand out copies to friends and colleagues and anyone else with a yearning to be free.

Jennings' spirit will be strongly present at the National Constitution Center Saturday through Monday for "The Constitution in Our Midst," the inaugural event of the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution.

Among the various programs and events, ABC alum Ted Koppel will moderate a debate between U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.). Topic: Do terror detainees have the right to habeas corpus?

The discussion, at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, is free and open to the public.

As for the overall Jennings Project confab, "I can't think of anything that would have moved Peter more," says Freed, a member of the advisory board. "This is something he embraced in the latest part of his life. He was having so much fun with the intellectual pursuit and challenge."

Freed and Jennings married in '97. He died in August '05 from lung cancer. Freed, formerly an ABC producer, now helps run the production company created by her late husband, PJ Productions. It's been renamed the Documentary Group.

A loyal Canadian, Jennings lived in this country for 40 years and grew to think of America as his home. He secretly became a U.S. citizen in '03, just days before hosting the official dedication of the Constitution Center.

"Canada meant a lot to him, but in the end, Peter felt truly American," Freed says. "The Constitution made him feel even more deeply about this country.

"He liked to refer to it when he was talking about something. He was taken by it, and he was taken by being taken about it."

New CBS Evening News chief Rick Kaplan, once Jennings' executive producer on ABC World News Tonight, says the anchor "never went anywhere" without his trusty Constitution.

For the record, Kaplan says he's carried one himself for 25 years. The always-understated producer calls it "the most liberating, wonderful document that human beings could ever have possibly written, next to the Ten Commandments." (We're getting goosebumps.)

Freed keeps one of her husband's marked-up copies in her briefcase. She says he gave the most dog-eared one to Todd Brewster, his cowriter on the '04 ABC mini-series Peter Jennings Reporting: In Search of America, as well as on the companion book.

Jennings "was a scholar of American history," says former WNT executive producer Bill Lord, a 32-year ABC veteran. "He was a quick study with an almost photographic memory. I used to say that Koppel absorbed the world through osmosis. Jennings experienced it, studied it."

In some ways, Jennings' character was already American, Freed says.

"He was brash, massively enthusiastic, adventurous. He was always exploring. It's not surprising to me that in the end he would embrace this country."

Back on top. After finishing No. 2 to ABC for three of four weeks, Brian Williams' NBC Nightly News returned to first place in the Nielsens.

With Williams reporting from Iraq most of last week, Nightly averaged 8.99 million total viewers, about 50,000 ahead of ABC World News Tonight, with Elizabeth Vargas subbing for vacationing Charlie Gibson. (His first vacation in 10 months, we're told.)

Katie Couric's CBS Evening News had 7.0 million viewers.

As ABC was quick to point out, World News finished first among target 25-to-54-year-old viewers for the fifth time in six weeks.

World News notched 2.8 million viewers in that advertiser-friendly demographic, compared with 2.6 million for NBC and 2.2 million for CBS.

Mea culpa. Contrary to what was reported Sunday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is not an only child. He has a sister, Jenna, a pastor's wife with two kids. She lives in Rochester, N.Y.