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Roads Less Traveled The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's graduating class walked without senior Charles Bishop Kuralt in the spring of 1955. The 20-year-old, who at age 16 had enrolled with an intent to major in history, had been too busy in his role as editor of the student-run newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, to bother with attending to his studies -- or even going to classes. Where he did go after his class walked was directly to The Charlotte News, the largest evening newspaper in the Carolinas. There, he wrote front-page stories on a wide range of topics, including one story about a runaway circus elephant named Vicki who eluded capture for 11 days. "The elephant who went out like a lion came in like a lamb," Kuralt wrote, and then went on to tell how Vicki was captured. The young reporter dressed as a bum to get inside a rescue mission to write about what life was like for the destitute. "I was there to find out what it's like on the other side of the green-painted plate glass windows that face the street," he wrote, under a headline that read, "Night at the Rescue Mission: Reporter Kuralt Checks In." He is pictured under a "Jesus Saves" sign, slim, a hat casting a shadow on the upper part of his face, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. He wrote a touching story about the death of a sparrow, not normally the stuff of newspapers but an engaging story when told by such a talented writer. "She was no mere straw-and-grass sparrow. Somewhere in the Diana Drive neighborhood of Joe Ammons, she had found a fine, long length of nylon thread. With infinite skill and care, she had wound the nylon thread in her nest. It was like the frosting on the cake, or the single red cherry atop a sundae, or the bright chrome strip of an automobile." But the story ended in tragedy: One of the sparrow's babies strangled itself on the thread; the mother despaired and abandoned her fine nest. Kuralt was assigned to write a story on prostitution in Charlotte, and after some investigation cheerfully reported that Charlotte had no lascivious ladies of the night. "Charles tells me there's no prostitution in this town," the News editor growled at reporter Julian Scheer. "Do you think that's true?" Scheer replied that there might be a few. "Well, do you think you could find Charles one so he can do this story?" Charles found the story, all right, but felt he was a washout at hard news reporting. He had been at the News for nearly a year when he began to pen a column in April 1956 that would pave the way for the rest of his career. "People" sent him onto the streets of Charlotte in search of stories. "Each day I would seek out some cop or kid or cab driver," Kuralt wrote, "and tell his story in a few hundred words . . . I used to walk bravely up to panhandlers and crapshooters -- the sort of people others avoided -- and strike up conversation." On the
streets, Kuralt met the likes of Israel Smith who collected junk
by day and played the violin
at night. He wrote that Smith had
been educated
at New York's Julliard School of Music. "But there's no money
in Mozart," the junkman told him. "There is money in piles
of lamp bases, garage roofs and airplane motors," Kuralt concluded. Kuralt's talent for doing these types of stories did not go unnoticed. The Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate awarded Kuralt its Ernie Pyle Award for the 170 "People" columns he penned in 1956. CBS sent a congratulatory note; Kuralt fired back, "If you really mean you're impressed by this, isn't there something you could do?" The director of news at CBS responded with a job offer, and thus began Kuralt's 37 years at the network. The
reporter who hosted such popular programs as "Sunday Morning" and "On
the Road" remained virtually unchanged from the writer who got his
start at The Charlotte News. The tone, styles and reportorial substance
laid down in "People" by 22-year-old Kuralt - trim, bright-eyed
and as fresh as the starched white shirt he wore - differed little
from that of the balding, roll-bellied reporter who at CBS collected
13 Emmys
and other awards for the stories he found in places where no one
else thought to look. |
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Grizzle, 28 Kenilworth Road, Asheville, North Carolina 28803 |
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