Charles Kuralt - Early Life, Early Career, Hit the Road, Charles, Retirement, Passing Into Controversy, Quotes

Radio and television correspondent, born in Wilmington, North Carolina, USA. A newspaper writer in North Carolina, he joined CBS News (1957), becoming a foreign correspondent in 1959. After 10 years abroad, he began exploring America in his On the Road series, and in 1979 became presenter of CBS's Sunday Morning. He published his memoirs, A Life on the Road (1990).

Charles Kuralt (10 September 1934 – 4 July 1997) was an award-winning American journalist whose long career with CBS made him famous as the motor home-traveling reporter whose chronicling of out-of-the-news American people and living made him as much of a household name as anyone who ever worked for CBS News.

Early Life, Early Career

Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Kuralt attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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.

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. 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.

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.

Kuralt often reveled in his image as the anti-muckraker.

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 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.

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 companionship with a Montana woman was made public. Kuralt apparently had a second, "shadow" family while his estranged wife lived in New York City, and his daughters from a previous marriage lived on the eastern seaboard. 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. 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 exacted a toll on 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. 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. What does that say---not about Charles Kuralt, but about us? 18:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)18:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)~~

Quotes

"For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment.