CBS Newsman Charles Kuralt Dies

The Wilmington native died Friday at age 62 of heart failure due to lupus, a chronic auto-immune disease that affects the skin, joints,organs and nervous system.

Colleagues of Kuralt offered a tribute to him on his old program "CBSNews Sunday Morning," incorporating clips from many of hisreports.

Kuralt, whose father was a social worker in Charlotte for almost three decades, was a longtime fund-raiser for UNC's School of Social Work. Hisfamily has asked that expressions of sympathy be made as gifts to theschool.

Kuralt joined CBS news in 1957 as a writer, after working as a reporterand columnist for the Charlotte News. The television news operationpromoted him to correspondent in 1959 at the age of 24, the youngest ever.

Kuralt's writing skills took him all over the globe handling hard news stories. He was CBS's first bureau chief for Latin America.

Eventually, he told his CBS bosses he was tooslow to cover breaking news and wanted to carve out a new niche:wandering the country in a Winnebago searching out colorful characters.He became host of "CBS News Sunday Morning," and his "On the Road"series was a hit with CBS viewers. He retired from the networkin 1994, noting he wanted to spend more time writing.

Kuralt told Bill Leslie in a recent interview in Chapel Hill thatwriting was his first love.

"I never was that good at the craft of TV, but I love to this day sittingdown at a typewriter or word processor and trying to craft a good sentence," Kuralt said.

Kuralt won many awards, including the Peabody and 10Emmys. He also wrote several books: "To the Top of the World," "DatelineAmerica," "On the Road with Charles Kuralt," "Southerners," "NorthCarolina is My Home," and "A Life on the Road."

More recently, Kuralt crafted similar stories for "American Moment," a syndicated series.

Kuralt described the topics as "cowboy hats and barber poles and otherinstitutions of Americanlife that can be covered in a minute and a half. There is so much that is rich about American life and it is sort of ignored. I want to do manhole covers. Just anything that might make a pretty good story."

Kuralt told Leslie that the most fun he had this year was narrating"Winnie the Pooh" in a Books on Tape series. He was also working on his seventh book. Kuralt said he was a slow writer, but when the wordsfinally came, they struck a deep chord with viewers.

Wallace Kuralt, owner of The Intimate Bookshops based in Chapel Hill, had spoken to his brother Thursday night. The outlook was good, he said.But by Friday morning, the beloved television newsman was gone.

One of the last things Kuralt did before his death was dictate a letter toformer UNC President William Friday. The letter said he was feeling fine,but if possible, when the time came he would like to be buried in UNC'sold campus cemetery.

The normally festive July 4th holiday instead found Bill Friday at theOld Chapel Hill Cemetery with a sad mission. He was poring over maps tofind just the right spot for his longtime friend's final resting place.Friday had been Dean of Students on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus back whenKuralt was editor of the student newspaper.

Come Tuesday, Kuralt's wish will be granted -- he will be buried closeto a majestic crepe myrtle tree.