Arnold Eric Sevareid (November 26, 1912 – July 9, 1992) was an American author and CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents who were hired by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and nicknamed "Murrow's Boys." Sevareid was the first to report the Fall of Paris in 1940, when the city was captured by German forces during World War II.

Sevareid followed in Murrow's footsteps as a commentator on the CBS Evening News for thirteen years, for which he was recognized with Emmy and Peabody Awards.

Early life

Sevareid was born in Velva, North Dakota to Alfred Eric and Clara Pauline Elizabeth Sevareid (née Hougen). The town's economy was largely dependent on wheat farming. According to Sevareid, his neighbors were extremely charitable towards friends but very wary of outsiders; it was an egalitarian but politically conservative community. his family moved to nearby Minot, and then to Minneapolis, Minnesota, settling on 30th Avenue North. He attended Central High School in Minneapolis. Sevareid graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1935. A descendant of Norwegian immigrants, he preserved a strong bond with the country of Norway throughout his life.

Sevareid was adventurous from a young age; several days after he graduated from Central High School in 1930, he and his friend Walter Port embarked on an expedition sponsored by the Minneapolis Star to travel by canoe from Minneapolis to York Factory, on Hudson Bay. They canoed up the Minnesota River and its tributary, the Little Minnesota River, to Browns Valley, portaged to Lake Traverse, and descended the Bois des Sioux River to the Red River of the North, which led to Lake Winnipeg. They then went down the Nelson River, Gods River, and Hayes River to Hudson Bay, a trip of . Sevareid's book Canoeing with the Cree (1935) was the result of this canoe trip and is still in print.

Early career

At age 18, Sevareid entered journalism as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal while he was a student at the University of Minnesota in political science. At the Journal, he wrote a five-part series on the Silver Shirts.

He wrote about the Plains influence on his life in his early memoir, Not So Wild A Dream (1946). The book is still in print and covers his life in Velva, his family, the Hudson Bay trip, his hitchhiking around the U.S., mining in the Sierra Nevada, the Great Depression years, his early journalism, and (especially) his experiences in World War II.

Wartime reporting

Relationship with Edward Murrow

Sevareid's work during World War II, with Edward Murrow as one of the original Murrow's Boys, was at the forefront of broadcasting. In 1940, he was the first to report on the Fall of France. Shortly afterward, he joined Murrow to report on the Battle of Britain. Later, Sevareid would refer fondly to the early years working with Murrow: "We were like a young band of brothers in those early radio days with Murrow." In his final broadcast with CBS, in 1977, he would call Murrow the man who "invented me."

Rescue in Burma

On August 2, 1943, Sevareid was on board a Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando that, having taken off from Assam in India, developed engine trouble over Burma while it was on a Hump airlift mission. He grabbed a bottle of Carew's gin before he parachuted out of the plane.

Yugoslavia

In Yugoslavia, Sevareid later reported on Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav Partisans.

Later career

thumb|U.S. President [[Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan with a group at NBC's taping of its "Christmas in Washington" special in the Pension Building in Washington, D.C. (1982). Left to right: NBC News anchor Roger Mudd, CBS News reporter Eric Sevareid, entertainer Dinah Shore, actress Diahann Carroll, actor and musician John Schneider, President Ronald Reagan, First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor Ben Vereen, and singer Debby Boone.]]

After the war, Sevareid continued to work for CBS. He had begun his own program, Eric Sevareid and the News, on June 27, 1942, on CBS; it ran for five minutes, starting at 8:55<!---9 p.m.--> (ET) on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1946, he reported on the founding of the United Nations and then penned Not So Wild a Dream (University of Missouri Press, 1946). The book, whose title comes from part of the closing passage of Norman Corwin's radio play On a Note of Triumph, appeared in eleven printings and became one of the primary sources on the lives of the generation of Americans who had lived through the Great Depression, only to confront the horrors of World War II. In the 1976 edition of the book, Sevareid wrote, "It was a lucky stroke of timing to have been born and lived as an American in this last generation. It was good fortune to be a journalist in Washington, now the single news headquarters in the world since ancient Rome. But we are not Rome; the world is too big, too varied." The interview was not broadcast over CBS but instead appeared in Look magazine. Those who disagreed with his views nicknamed him "Eric Severalsides." Sevareid recognized his own biases, which caused some to disagree with him vehemently. He said that as he had grown older, he had tended to become more conservative in foreign policy and liberal in domestic policy.

Walter Cronkite ended the broadcast by celebrating Severaid as, in his view, "one of the finest essayists of the century."

Sevareid later narrated the American history series Between The Wars. In 1981, Sevareid hosted a documentary series on PBS, entitled Enterprise, a profile on how America portrays business. The following year, he hosted the syndicated newsmagazine program Eric Sevareid's Chronicle.

He made a guest appearance as himself in a 1980 episode of the sitcom Taxi and also played himself in the 1983 space flight film The Right Stuff.

Personal life

Sevareid married the former Lois Finger. They had twin sons, Peter and Michael, born in Paris while Sevareid was stationed there as a war correspondent for CBS. In 1946 they were among the founders of Burgundy Farm Country Day school in Alexandria, Virginia, the first integrated school in the state.

Sevareid's second marriage was to Belen Marshall. They had a daughter, Cristina, born in New York while he was working as a commentator at the New York bureau.

His third marriage was to Suzanne St. Pierre, a CBS producer. [See Washington Post obituary]

Death

Sevareid died of stomach cancer in Washington, D.C., on July 9, 1992, at age 79.

Honors

thumb|right|220px|A portion of the Eric Sevareid Library at the [[University of Minnesota]]

  • 1950, 1964, 1976: Peabody Award
  • 1954: Alfred I. duPont Award
  • 1964: State of North Dakota Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award
  • 1965: Newspaper Guild of New York Page One Award
  • 1977: Paul White Award, Radio Television Digital News Association
  • Emmy Award nominee:
  • Best News Reporter or Commentator – 1955
  • Best News Commentary – 1958
  • 1993: Inducted posthumously into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame
  • On October 5, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that it would honor Sevareid and four other journalists of the 20th century with first-class rate postage stamps, to be issued on Tuesday, April 22, 2008. Sevareid's award was in recognition of his World War II reporting and his criticism of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communism campaign

See also

  • Alfred and Clara Sevareid House

References

Works

  • Canoeing with the Cree, 1935, reprinted 1968
  • Not So Wild a Dream (autobiography), 1946, reissued 1976
  • In One Ear: 107 Snapshots of Men and Events which Make a Far-Reaching Panorama of the American Situation at Mid-Century (essays), Knopf, 1952.
  • Small Sounds in the Night: A Collection of Capsule Commentaries on the American Scene, Knopf, 1956.
  • This is Eric Sevareid (essays), McGraw, 1964.
  • (With Robert A. Smith) Washington: Magnificent Capital, Doubleday, 1965.
  • (With John Case) Enterprise: The Making of Business in America, McGraw-Hill, 1983.
  • Raymond A. Schroth (1995) The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (Steerforth Press)
  • T. Harrell Allen (2017) The Voice of Reason: Eric Sevareid's CBS Commentaries (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)
  • Yesterday's News Excerpt from "Canoeing with the Cree" series, Minneapolis Star, September 6, 1930
  • Recording of final broadcast message, November 30, 1977.
  • Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Research Papers for Sevareid Biography Finding Aid at Loyola University New Orleans
  • Eric Sevareid Awards Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association
  • Eric Sevareid papers Library of Congress Manuscript Division