Charles Kuralt (September 10, 1934 – July 4, 1997) was an award-winning American journalist. He was most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and later as the first anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning, a position he held for fifteen years.
Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, as a boy Kuralt won a children's sports writing contest for a local newspaper by writing about a dog that got loose on the field during a baseball game. He later attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he became editor of The Daily Tar Heel and was a Brother of St. Anthony Hall (Delta Psi Fraternity). He worked as a reporter for the Charlotte News in his home state, where he wrote "Charles Kuralt's People," a column that won him an Ernie Pyle Award.
In 1967, Kuralt and a CBS camera crew accompanied Ralph Plaisted in his attempt to reach the North Pole by snowmobile, which resulted in the documentary To the Top of the World and his book of the same name.
Kuralt was said to have tired of what he considered the excessive rivalry between reporters on the hard news beats:
According to Thomas Steinbeck, the older son of John Steinbeck, the inspiration for "On the Road" was the success of Steinbeck's Travels with Charley (whose title was initially considered as the name of Kuralt's feature). John Steinbeck and Kuralt were said to be good friends.
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."
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 — in 1995 he narrated the TLC documentary The Revolutionary War and in early 1997 he signed on 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 significant news from the three previous decades. However, Kuralt barely got the chance to make those projects last. He was hospitalized in spring 1997 and died of complications from lupus on the Fourth of July that year.
By request in his will, Kuralt was buried on the UNC 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.
The revelation of the long-term relationship exacted a toll on Kuralt's image and reputation.
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