Wednesday, 10 September 2014 Charles Kuralt (09/10/1934 – 07/04/1997) Charles Kuralt attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but left to pursue journalism. In 1957, Kuralt moved to New York City and became a writer for the CBS Evening News and later a correspondent and primetime host. His On The Road segments ran for 20 years and took him to every state in the nation. He left the university life without taking a degree and returned to Charlotte to become general assignment reporter for the Charlotte News. As an aspiring and inspired reporter, he landed a daily column, Charles Kuralts People, which he used to describe the lives of everyday citizens. His work earned him the Ernie Pyle prize, attracting national attention. At the age of 23, the CBS network offered Kuralt the title CBS News Correspondent. Living his dream, he traveled wide and far, covering the wars in the Congo, Laos and Vietnam; school integration in the South; and piracy on the high seas. Ten years after joining CBS, Kuralt took to the back roads of America, producing his famous On the Road segment for the CBS Evening News. Over the next 20 years, Kuralt and his crew visited all 50 states in a battered motor home, logging more than a million miles. He did stories on wrestlers and jugglers and mountain climbers, traffic cops, tattoo artists, gandy dancers, sheep shearers, bagel bakers, horseshoe players, rodeo riders, sorghum makers and seashell collectors. Over the course of his career, he won three Peabody awards and ten Emmy Awards for his broadcast journalism. Charles Kuralt died in 1997 in New York City at the age of 62 following complications from lupus. And now, the rest of the story! Kuralts death brought about the unearthing of an unusually complicated private life. For nearly 30 years, he had maintained one home with his wife in Manhattan, and another with his lover, Patricia Shannon, in Montana, and her children from a previous marriage. Shannon asserted that the house and lands owned by Kuralt in Montana had been willed to her, a position upheld by the Montana Supreme Court. Kuralt may be most famous for having observed, Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything, but I think a second quote says more about him, “I think Id have done better if I had been a little more relaxed-if I had not pressed quite so hard, if Id not lost quite so much sleep.” Pictured ~ Charles alone and Charles with Patricia Shannon
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 11:18:40 +0000