Charles Kuralt won two Grammy awards in the spoken word categories

Kuralt's Grammys fitting tribute to newsman's career

February 26, 1998
Web posted at: 4:55 p.m. EDT (1655 GMT)

(CNN) -- He won 12 Emmys and three Peabodys for his work on television, along with a host of other awards accumulated along the way just for who he was. And Wednesday night Charles Kuralt -- who died on July 4, 1997 -- added two more trophies to a well-deserved list.

Joining Shawn Colvin, Bob Dylan and other musicians as Grammy award winners, Kuralt's awards came not in music, but in the spoken word categories. His awards -- one for a recording of his insightful and poetic observations of America in the spring and another for his reading of the children's classic "Winnie-the-Pooh" -- are fitting for the man whose unpretentious reports enthralled viewers of CBS news for nearly four decades.

Kuralt began his broadcast career at WUNC, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's radio station, in 1953, and his writing career with the school's student paper, The Daily Tar Heel. A North Carolina native, Kuralt moved down the road to Charlotte after graduation for a job at the Charlotte News. There, his human interest stories garnered him the 1956 Ernie Pyle Memorial Award -- and the attention of CBS News, where he went in 1957.

After ten years of news, including four tours of Vietnam and a trip to the North Pole, Kuralt wanted no more of the hard stuff. With a three man crew, he began a trial run of "On the Road," and drove a mobile home into the living rooms of millions of Americans over the next 13 years.

Kuralt's comforting voice, weaving stories of real people in real places, is forever etched in the minds of many Americans

Kuralt introduced his viewers to unicyclists, craggy mountain men, champion boomerang throwers, and countless views of an American landscape many never see outside the small screen. And then he put those stories into book form -- "On the Road with Charles Kuralt," "Charles Kuralt's America," "Southerners: Portrait of a People," "A Life on the Road," which was the top selling non-fiction book of 1990.

The veteran newsman hosted "Sunday Morning" on CBS for 15 years, retiring in 1994 only to return early last year as host of "I Remember," a weekly hour-long CBS news presentation that focused on a single important event of the last 30 years.

Kuralt died in New York of complications from lupus, at the age of 62.

Kuralt's comforting voice, weaving stories of real people in real places, is forever etched in the minds of many Americans. And thanks to the wonders of the recording industry, that voice -- and Kuralt's stories -- will go on.

Related stories:

• Charles Kuralt, CBS' poet small-town America, dies at 62 - July 4, 1997
• Veteran CBS newsman Charles Kuralt: A gift for slowness - July 23, 1997
• Folk musicians take home top Grammys - February 26, 1998

Related sites:

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

• Putnam author bio: Charles Kuralt
• CBS
  • CBS Sunday Morning

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

---

 

---

Sound off on our message boards & chat

© 1998 Cable News Network, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Terms under which this service is provided to you.