North Carolina People; Charles Kuralt, Journalist

Production of North Carolina people is made possible by a grant from WA Kovio bank a symbol of strength stability and service for over a century. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Like many of you every Sunday I sit down and turn

my set on and there is Charles Kuralt dear friend long time university advocate a graduate of the place a native son and recently turned off the road and into the parking lot of the Joseph and Kathleen Bryant Communications Center Research Triangle Park. And here he is on North Carolina people. Charles it's wonderful to see you again. It's good to see you as always Bill. Well I wanted to visit with you a little bit about what you're doing and you share all those wonderful visits every Sunday morning and on the road and everywhere else. Tell me a little bit about that Sunday morning program that you used to be a package of wonderful experiences but now you make news every lead stories. We always hope that no news will break out to mess up our nice little News Sunday Bill but that's right. Every now and then something happens. Bush and Gorbachev meet in Malta or Nelson Mandela walks out of that prison after 27 and a half years

and of course the first responsibility we have is to show people what's going on what's going on today leaves one breathless Doesn't that I don't see how I don't see how anybody can keep up with with events in Europe and South Africa and elsewhere. I want to come back to that in a minute but I want to stick to one line of questioning here about your show first. Geist letter Zuckerman your man in Nebraska Billy Taylor. Where do you find all these wonderful people. Well we needed to find specialists. CBS News for all its expertise doesn't have people walk around the halls who know all about classical music or all about jazz. So we decided to use practitioners eugénie as a marvelous flute is one of the best in the world and anybody who's heard Billy Taylor play piano knows that he has few peers really.

So we we just went out and hired them. Roger Welch who sends us occasional postcard from Nebraska a little essay from the Great Plains. He well he wears bib overalls but the truth of the matter is he's an English teacher from the University of Nebraska who got tired of teaching and went to raising trees and children in a small town in Nebraska and he's an old friend of mine. Every time we needed to know anything about the Great Plains I would go to Roger and ask him. And after a while I said you know what you ought to be getting paid for this. So I did not. Does I say that for the likes of FIDE Bill Geist Bill Geist was easy to find he was on the New York Times and thought that light essays he was writing for them might translate into television. And he's a writer primarily but I think he's enjoying the glamour of big TV. Well I'll tell you he has a sly little sense of humor too.

You know as I say he's a witty man. I'm very much impressed that that you know so much about that program it's kind of a secret show you know most people don't even know. Oh no no. Thousands of us we visit we do every day but you brought in this John Leonard. There's a there's a man who can be really caustic when he wants to be he's another user of the language I would have always have felt that words count even in a picture medium you know Eric Sevareid who always hated the lights and the cameras and the things you have to have for TV was heard or wants one good word is worth a thousand pictures. I I have believe that that language matters and and so we we always look around for writers and Leonard is primarily one of those. Anyone who knows you and followed you knows that what you say and how you introduce things are your own words. What time of the morning do you go to work.

My goodness if you want to depends on whether we have any news breaking out here I spend my Saturdays working on my programme and reworking it and then I show up about 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning usually And I'm proud to say that I write my own weather forecast and then dust and dust sports report. Whenever the Tar Heels win in basketball which isn't every weekend I managed you so much to get the fact although I've noticed that a lot of my Horowitz That was some experience for us traveling with him to Russia seeing all that he was born there of course and he hadn't been back for 60 years. He felt that he never would go back. But when Gorbachev started lightning the load on people in the Soviet Union and when he found that he could travel in the usual Horowitz style with his his Dover sole and asparagus

flown in from France he thought it would be great and it was one of the most emotional things I've ever had anything to do with a television less rapt crowd absolutely silent as he first put his hands on the keys and then after an absence of 60 years was playing in a hole where he had played when he was 20 and it was really that was a trip to remember and I'm so glad it happened near the end of his life that it lifted his spirits gave him an A. New concert career for several years there. You know that last closing scene that you had when you played the encore was as moving an experience as anybody ever had to use television at all. Yeah. Of Andy Rooney wrote a little essay about that. Matt when I rush out in the

audience with his eyes closed leaned his head back and and we saw a tear trickle down his cheek. Horowitz was playing Schumann's scenes of childhood trauma. That's right. And that encore was lost on nobody on the whole. Of course Rooney said that man with a tear didn't look much like the enemy to him. When you close that program on Sundays Charles you take us out to the blue big sky country or to the Everglades or the Outer Banks or somewhere where there are birds and animals. You're teaching us about our environment. You feel comfortable about what's going on today in environmental protection what you sing. Well I think we're a lot. We're a lot more aware of the problem than we were years ago. I grew up in the slums of the meaning of the word ecology I believe we didn't talk about it much in the old days. Now on

this notion of the earth as a space ship with a limited supply of fuel and food and water and a constantly growing passenger list is a concept that's familiar to every third grader. And it's encouraging to me that the young ones are the environmental enforcers they are they are the ones who really believe in clean air and clean water believe in not cutting down every Forester terracing every hillside. So I think there is hope but we do have a long way to go. Frankly we went for eight years there in the Reagan administration without any. Governmental interest on the subject and in fact some Sometimes the secretaries of the interior were were we were supposed to be the caretakers of the environment were were in fact the enemy. So I would help if I think if Washington were

as interested in the subject as the people are but of course if that was just a lot's at stake a lot of you could you could say that about a lot of you. You really do enjoy the ghost out there in the Rockies in Montana. How do you find all those places people write you about the money they do. But occasionally I still get back on the road this project I've had for more than 20 years now and we find a lot of sightings by those looking out the window talking to people in cafes. It's such a rich. Our country and beauty and characters that you can hardly go wrong. You could probably close your eyes and stick a pin in a map of the United States and go there and find an interesting story. Might be a little bit irrelevant to the news of the day but of course that's been my specialty all these years. That's what makes it interesting. Yeah that's true.

Did you not when you were really doing the on the road series you had people write to you constantly about ideas. Oh yeah sift through all of that. Yeah I've kept well I still have a jumbled file by states when the story comes in that sounds like it might be a good idea I stick it in there and I'll bet when we cross the state line I pull out the file to see what's there but serendipity leads you to more stories than the letters and newspaper clippings do you put together your own crew and Teemu you. You do that so naturally and they seem so photographically correct you must to work together along. I sure have. Izzy and Larry and I and we have been to every corner of every state over and over and over again and there's no there's hardly a road we haven't been down. Of course I like coming home. And so Izzy and Larry and I don't even need a map when we come the north car.

That week I was roads by hard thinking of coming home how your mother died. They're alive and well living in Katie Hall and looking forward to the coming of the spring and summer I think. They may have slowed down a little bit as gardeners but they still get out there and do a good deal of that. You were speaking a little bit ago about getting out seeing what's out there and visiting with people as you do you find the mood of this country when you get out away from the big cities Charles to be the steady believing faith holing kind of people that really hold America together that what you discover. I would say so you know I think that we're hopeful people by nature even when things go wrong as they have so often in American history of thinking out of the depression that is which we remember the notion what was that things would be better for

the children of the. People could be hungry as some of them were or are jobless as nearly everybody was at one time or another and still go on or concerned about their children's future. Confident that things would be better and that confidence is existed in every generation I think and it's worked out that way things really have been better for the children than they were for their folks by and large. Look at our state as it was when you and I were growing up in it and heaven knows we still have lots of problems of poverty and illiteracy backwardness. Even problems of of bigotry and prejudice. I know that but my goodness it's unrecognizable almost to someone who grew up here in the 30s and 40s. You referred a moment ago to what's happening around the world you know and as you look at East Europe Africa

basically Russia Germany China. All these people are reaching for something. How do you read what's happening and they all turned toward our country are we the exemplar now that we ought to be and sense of what what's going on out that seems to me a great struggle of the human spirit you've always said that on your program and other places ideas will burst through. Is that what's happening. Yeah. You know I have always said that but I wasn't always confident that it that it really would but I would live to see it. You see that and now look at what's happening. It's it's it's just breathtaking but yes I think that a lot of this has been inspired by the best things about the United States. You know I heard Lincoln quoted in Tiananmen Square in China last year by young people

hungry for more knowledge about the United States. And this is the destination of choice for millions of people of the world. And if they are never going to get here they would like to turn their country into. What they imagine is a model of democracy I have. I know we're far from that but I do think that we have inspired as a people much of what's going on in the world. You find ferment everywhere though don't you when you talk on Sunday to your friends who are scattered all over the world all of the CBS News Network system. It's just it's just happening so fast and so often. How do you cipher through off of it. Well I think journalism has been very hard put to explain what is going on in the world because there is not a profit in the business. Nobody foresaw that things would would that that freedom would come along so fast. I think there are

dangers and I think they're going to be disappointments along the way. I don't think it's going to be a smooth transition to a representative democracy and in countries which have never known that some of them like you see in the turbulence in the Baltic region for example Lithuania and those countries it's not settled yet apparently and there and I'm afraid that there are a lot of people with their old grudges. Which now will be loosed in the world. But never mind I. I think that it's freedom as much to rejoice about. Right now this raises the question of course of what gets on the screen for us to see. You worry about the power of television and shaping what people get to see and understand an idea developing and now. Well good people are doing their best bill. I think the hope I think is that we're no longer limited to just the

evening news cast on the three networks as we were pretty much in when I started out. Now there's Ted Koppel having his talks late in the evening and there's MacNeil-Lehrer. Talking endlessly about important events and other CNN with 24 hours of news not too much interpretation but but at least an effort to tell you what's going on. I think that we're being fairly well served just because of all these voices. And I've always believed that that the more voices the better. And a country like this used you see enormous success really I think that this is the much the MO here with what's happened in the last month or so people learn more about what's going on out there but it must be enormously expensive for a network to do all that you do. I guess it is I don't move those sort of like you know I play the bailout but I try not to as

how much it's costing but yeah I mean it is I've I heard that that each of the networks spent a million dollars just to be there at that prison farm when Mandela walked out a couple of months ago. So it's it is an expensive undertaking but one that works. Except I think their responsibility to lose money on the name of public information if that's what it takes. As you look back sometimes as I'm sure you do on your days at Chapel Hill when you were editing the Daily Tar Heel and telling everybody then how to keep things moving as it justifiably could. The university was a great experience for you was it not. It was the best experience I ever had. I came to Chapel Hill is a dumb country boy

terrified wondering if I could do the work and left there with the words of really great teachers ringing in my ears I still hear those words every now and then I was a history major in a time when I should. Sure it's still true but that was that was some history department back then great teachers and I felt like I just changed my life and editing the Tarheel. That was a challenge. We didn't have a very large staff and people may not know that The Daily Tar Heel is not an arm of the school of journalism writing like that is just a bunch of kids putting it out. And as exam time approach to the number of kids putting it out dwindled until finally just two or three of us you know already have. And

but it was fun. I had to keep dropping classes in order to keep the paper coming out until finally I had dropped the whole my last semester of my senior year I wasn't even a student. You who knew a lot in the administration may have known that but I tried to keep it a secret. For everybody else I never will and I wasn't interested but I got a paper out that I but it was love that was the freest happiest year of my life I suppose that that year of putting out the Tarheel pontificating about anything utterly free. That's the way the paper should be. As you move about the country today and you go to a lot of colleges Folliard know this young people ask you some hard questions I'm sure but you worry about what they see in leadership across corporate America today or government. The greed and fraud that we've run into more of it than I think usually. Is this a problem for us

as you see it. I don't I don't know I'm pretty but I'm pretty much impressed by the young people I meet. I mean they seem not to be the selfish generation that they've sometimes been depicted. When I was in school in the 50s they called us the silent generation but good heavens out of that silent generation on our campus came state leaders like Rauf Neal and Joel Fleischmann the group you could run right down I would very long list of the few of my classmates. I don't I. I think that we have a pretty impressive group of young people in our country today and not least on the campus I know best I love you know when I came to Chapel

Hill. Any boy any white male high school graduate could get in it. If you if you graduated in North Carolina you were automatically admitted to Chapel Hill. Well today as we all know the competition is is 100 times more intense than that and I think it has led to probably our student body at a higher level than we had in that than we had in my day. Your background and experience there and your life been a glowing tribute to the study of the humanities and liberal arts I would you would tell younger people that would you not. I sure would I. I have a couple of daughters who are both English majors I was a history major. You do wonder sometimes how am I going to translate this history major into a job that I can

earn money out. But I don't think university is great universities especially ought to be trade schools and I think it's all right to study journalism or to study broadcasting or study business but the deep pleasures in life are all rooted in the humanities and once you get out and start working you don't always have time to read Melville impose its lows. Those experiences have to be I have to be. I learned in school and I think that's really the role of the principal role of universities I. I jeered. I feel old diffident talking to you about the subject. You know so much about it my doze a little but no but that's my feeling. Every once in a while and your copy on Sundays I hear a reference to a bell boy lark to pose and I know where it came from I think writing comes

from reading. I think all writers here in their heads the rhythm of writers they have read and I'll always be grateful to Dr. Cotton for teaching me those poets. He lives across the street from me I'll tell you said well good and well that Charles another book in the works. Heaven help me yes. I like your writing about I'm writing. While the working title is a life on the road so it's of sort of a story of all my travels. It was supposed to have been finished three springs ago. I spent the advance three years ago and now I have to finish the book. You must write so it has to be delivered in the spring and and I suppose I'll finally get it done. I had wanted it to be a good book but if you sit down at the keyboard and try to write a good book that paralyzes you know as a writer so I just write whatever comes to mind

about my memories of travelling around the world and the country. Do you find as you as you do this at you you relive some of these explosions and you get a different perception that the second time around. Yeah. I was for example I was in Laos and Vietnam that part of the world very early 960 before us was a tall and involved and. And looking back at my notes of those days. Well you know of course that's an education. And what you should have said at the time about what I should have been able to perceive about what was coming. On the night of April 20 any of your friends are going to gather over here at the triangle at the Sheraton Hotel and we're going to salute Charles Kuralt audio friend from CBS. The governor of the state and President Spangler and Chancellor Harding and all and we're looking forward to this occasion there as I way of saying thank you to you for being such a great ambassador for the state. I know this kind of thing

embarrasses you but I want you to know we're looking forward to it. Well I I look I look forward to it too. It is embarrassing and I I haven't I haven't really done anything for our state I. I think this state deserves the really best efforts of its citizens and I think it's not just the success of the company or personal success that counts I think people in our state really need to give more time to the common welfare. That's my message. I know you have a large audience and and it would help if I mean I think we're a neighborly place but it would help if we were even a little less selfish than we are I think. Well that's going to be a grand occasion and we're all looking forward to the professorship at bio father's name. We're so glad to honor him after all he's done at the state. It's a monumental career and we're grateful for him.

Well he and my mother both gave their lives to social work and knowing about some of the needs of the state and I suppose I got a lot of mileage is from them. Well I'm sure you did. And they've all got stood you in well if I may put it that way. Thank you Bill where you're traveling next. I don't know from one week to the next where I'm going. My big ambition when I get this book finally done is to get back on the old bus which is parked in Seattle waiting for me to come back to work and head down the road not entirely sure where we are going to spend the night. I'm sorry we've run out of time for this wonderful visit with you but thank you dear friend for turning off the road and joining us. Nobody I'd rather join. Thank you. Thank you sir. Production of North Carolina people is made possible by a grant from watt Kovio bank

a symbol of strength stability and service for over a century.