Newsman and part-time Montana resident Tom Brokaw was in a Minneapolis airport recently, and told the woman at the ticket counter that he had to get to Great Falls in the worst possible way.

"That would be Northwest Airlines," Brokaw said the clerk told him.

And with that quip, the world-renowned former anchor of NBC Nightly News looked out on the attorneys gathered in Helena Thursday night for the annual State Bar of Montana meeting, and asked them to make their best effort to help limit the bitter divisiveness that permeates not only national politics but also some attitudes in the Treasure State.

"Our national leaders and their hired guns create fears and exploit them," Brokaw said. "Politics always has been a rough business, but now it's a cold, take-no-prisoners attitude.

" … I suggest that's divisive to our common purpose in the long run and is happening at a time when the challenges we face need more common ground, not less." He also urged the crowd to use that approach when it involves newcomers to Montana. Brokaw and his wife, Meredith, first came to Montana in the 1970s and eventually bought a ranch southeast of Big Timber. He laughed as he recalled a typical Montana encounter on a Livingston golf course, when a man raced toward him in a golf cart, waving a club in the air and said "I think you left your eight iron on the last hole." "I said ‘Thank you' and he said ‘Can I hunt elk on your property?' " "This is the last great place. We all know that," Brokaw said. "It can be that for everyone, from the old timers to newcomers. But the rules of law have to be applied equitably and fairly." He said that during a recent dispute with the state over hunting permits for land that abuts his property — a clash that brought him once again into the national spotlight — no officials involved in the conflict contacted him to try to learn his point of view.

"It seemed like since I was an out-of-stater, that I was just wrong somehow," Brokaw said. "If the only voices in this debate are those who say go back to where you came from or I paid for this and will do damn well what I please, we'll all be losers.

"I believe that in Montana, we need to create a new dialogue, as we did with Montana speed limits, open container laws and open spaces. … We need to have new civility and new cordiality on both sides." A native of South Dakota, Brokaw started his 38-year career with NBC in Omaha, before eventually taking the helm of the national Nightly News program for more than 20 years. He's also the author of "The Greatest Generation," a best-selling book written through interviews and letters from the survivors of the D-Day landings in 1944.

He stepped down from anchoring the evening broadcasts last December — but that doesn't mean he's not involved in the nightly news. Brokaw said he contacts the news desk just about every day.

"When they said I retired, that was always the wrong word to let slip out," Brokaw said before his speech. "I was just shifting gears. I just didn't want to have to be somewhere every night at 6:30.

"I get great pleasure in being an editor-at-large and just watching everything." His new 10-year agreement with NBC involves producing documentaries, which is a task he's readily undertaken. As part of that work, he's been to New York and New Orleans, New Zealand and Chile — and that's just in the past few months.

But even as he travels, Brokaw said the Big Sky is always near him.

"I may only be in Montana part time, but it's full-time in my heart," Brokaw said.