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Early Life, Early Career Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Kuralt attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He worked as a reporter for the Charlotte News in his home state before moving to the CBS network as a writer, where he became well-known as the host of the Eyewitness to History series. He traveled around the world as a journalist for the network, including stints as CBS's Chief Latin American Correspondent and then as Chief West Coast Correspondent. Hit the Road, Charles But Kuralt---who attracted CBS in the first place with "Charles Kuralt's People," a column he wrote while at the Charlotte News that won him the Ernie Pyle Award---tired of what he considered the excessive rivalry between reporters on the hard news beats. "I didn't like the competitiveness or the deadline pressure," he told the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, upon his induction to their Hall of Fame. "I was sure that Dick Valeriani of NBC was sneaking around behind my back--- and of course, he was!---getting stories that would make me look bad the next day. Even though I covered news for a long time, I was always hoping I could get back to something like my little column on the Charlotte News." When he persuaded CBS to let him try out just such an idea for three months, it turned into a quarter-century project and his graduation from top-of-the-line reporter to news legend. "On the Road" became a regular feature on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkitein 1967. Famously enough, Kuralt hit the road in a motor home (he wore out six before he was through) with a small crew and avoided the interstates in favour of the nation's back roads in search of America's people and their doings. According to Thom Steinbeck, the older son of John Steinbeck, the inspiration for "On the Road" was the success of Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. * John Steinbeck and Kuralt were said to be good friends. Anything from unusual hobbyists to unusual families to the simple pleasures of unknown places was considered worthy of Kuralt's attention, and part of "On the Road"'s appeal may also have been that Kuralt was never known to have set a specific itinerary for himself. No matter whatever else he did for CBS---hosting CBS Sunday Morning program from 1979 to 1994, contributing to other CBS News projects---"On the Road" became Kuralt's legacy and legend. His features often captured the beauty of the American countryside, sometimes using images and sounds with no voice-overs to effectively capture the scene. During his career, he won three Peabody awards and ten Emmy awards for journalism. Kuralt often reveled in his image as the anti-muckraker. "You know, most reporters can't go back to the towns they wrote stories about," he told a biographer in 1994. "I never wrote that kind of story." Retirement Kuralt never forgot his roots, as one of his books was titled, North Carolina Is My Home. Kuralt's younger brother Wallace, who died in December of 2003, was also well-known in his home state, having been the owner of "The Intimate Bookshop" on Franklin Street in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus town for many years. In addition, a portion of land along the Roanoke, Tar, Neuse, Cape Fear Ecosystem---so named for the rivers which flow into the Albemarle, Currituck, and Pamlico Sounds---has been named for Kuralt, honoring his having given as much time to nature and wildlife as to people in his "On the Road" and Sunday Morning stories. At age 60, Kuralt surprised many by retiring from CBS News. At the time, he was the longest tenured on-air personality in the News division. Yet he hinted that his retirement might not be complete---he signed on in early 1997 to host a syndicated, three-times-a-week, ninety-second broadcast, "An American Moment," presenting what CNN called "slices of Americana." At that time, Kuralt also agreed to host a CBS cable broadcast show, I Remember, designed as a weekly, hourlong review of signficant news from three decades previous. But Kuralt barely got the chance to make those projects last. He was hospitalised in spring 1997 and died of complications from lupus on the Fourth of July that year. Passing Into Controversy By request in his will, Kuralt was buried on the UNC-CH grounds in Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. The University uses a Kuralt speech in its television commercials and displays many of his awards and a re-creation of his office in its Journalism School. But two years after his death, Kuralt's personal reputation came under scrutiny when a decades-long affair was made public by a Montana woman with whom Kuralt apparently had a second, "shadow" family while his official and legal family lived in New York City. She asserted that the house in Montana had been willed to her. According to court testimony, Kuralt had met her while doing a story on a park she had volunteered and promoted to build in Reno, Nevada in 1968, which was called "Pat Baker Park" in her honor. Pat Baker Park is still in a lower income area of Reno that had no parks until Ms. Baker promoted her plan. Kuralt mentions Pat Baker and the building of the park -- but not the affair -- in his autobiography, "Charles Kuralt: A Life on the Road." The revelation of the longterm relationship nearly destroyed Kuralt's image and reputation. But his biographer, Ralph Grizzle, who sometimes faced hostility and even boycott threats when trying to promote Remembering Charles Kuralt, attempted to rehabilitate Kuralt's image in a USA Today column called "Forgiving Charles Kuralt": Each Sunday morning as Charles spoke to us seated on a stool, he was perched, in our minds, on a pedestal. Well aware of his own flaws, he never aspired to such lofty heights. He drank too much, he smoked too much, he ate too much and, now, it seems, he loved too much. May we forgive his excesses as readily as we embraced, unknowingly, of course, the emotional deficits that drove him to seek out the people and places that so enthralled him, and through him, us. All Kuralt really intended to be was someone who did the world a little good. "If I do any good," he told a Chapel Hill newspaper reporter in 1965, "it's just the same thing all journalists hope they do - maybe some good by enlightening people about the times they live in." Kuralt enlightened by seeing the good in us - not because that was all there was to see but because he chose to. We praised him for his good-news approach, even bestowing him with 13 Emmy and three Peabody awards. It is unfortunate that when we discovered that all the news about his own life was not good, we chose to lash out at his memory. What does that say---not about Charles Kuralt, but about us? Quotes | ||||||||||
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