'The View' co-hosts, past and present, pay tribute to Barbara Walters

Sharing memories that were warm, nostalgic and above all filled with gratitude, current and former cast members of "The View'' said their goodbyes to show founder Barbara Walters on a special edition Tuesday. Walters, who launched the program in 1997 and retired in 2014, died Friday at the age of 93. 

Each of the returning co-hosts said Walters had a profound impact on their lives and careers, while the show's current moderator, Whoopi Goldberg — who has the second-longest tenure on the show after Joy Behar — noted that the pioneering TV journalist was "the reason why we're all sitting here. Really, if not for her, I don't know where most of us would be." Behar — a regular since launch with the exception of a two-year hiatus from 2013 to '15 — called Walters "the original role model" and "one of a kind." 

Joining by phone, Meredith Vieira (1997-2006) said the show "opened the door to so many opportunities for me, and it made me realize that you don't have to stay on one path in life. It's OK to veer off it. And I owe that realization to Barbara." Vieira left in 2006 to become co-anchor of "Today."

"The View" in fact was Walters' late career side-path, launched when she was 68 and still TV journalism's preeminent interviewer but also looking to expand her production company, Barwal. As she told Newsday at the time, "We never knew from daytime, as they say, but I had been talking with [her producer Bill Geddie] for years about doing a program with three or four women of different generations, sitting around and hashing out the story of the day. It will be like when you pick up the phone and call your mother or daughter or best friend and say 'What do you think about this situation … ?' "

Those first hosts were Vieira, a former "60 Minutes" correspondent; Behar, the comedian whom Walter met during a testimonial dinner for Milton Berle; Star Jones, a former assistant prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office who had hosted her own syndicated show ("Jones & Jury"); and Debbie Matenopoulos, a 22-year-old who studied journalism at New York University and had scant TV experience, other than some MTV.

Matenopoulos — the youngest of the two-dozen co-hosts over the years — on Tuesday described "a relationship that was really very mother-daughter." Walters, she said, "took a huge chance on me ... and she taught me everything. It was like Eliza Doolittle in 'My Fair Lady.' "

Jones, according to news reports at the time, had a falling out with Walters before leaving in 2006, but on Tuesday recalled someone who "introduced me to the whole Upper East Side social scene. ... The best seat in the house at any social event was next to Barbara Walters because she could tell you about everybody in the room. ... Going to lunch with BW? Baby, you would get all the information." 

Lisa Ling, whose tenure was relatively brief (1999-2002), said, "I remember one of the first lunches I had with her, very early on, and she took me to Café des Artistes ... and we were sitting in a corner ... . I come from a family that is not particularly communicative ... . I've been watching all these clips over the last couple of days of how she made ... [interview subjects] cry so effortlessly and so easily. And, I'm telling you, when she started asking me about my mom, I was just wailing. ... I got myself into therapy right after that. And I became diligent about going every week. And it wasn't because Barbara traumatized me. It was because she started asking me questions that I didn't really know the answer to." 

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a "View" regular for a decade (2003-2013), said, "I didn't expect waves of grief come over me like they have with her because I think we all just assumed we'd continue to be able to speak with her and share thoughts with her. She and I had a layered relationship. She was my TV mom, my mentor ... for 10 years I had that privilege of sitting next to Barbara Walters and getting my masters in the school of broadcasting. I like to say she was contagiously, compassionately curious."