Bill Kurtis Biography
Bill Kurtis is an American television journalist, producer, narrator, and newscaster. His coverage of a severe tornado outbreak landed him a job as an on-air news reporter, followed by a successful career as a television anchor in Chicago.
How old is Bill Kurtis? – Age
He is 83 years old as of September 21, 2023. He was born in 1940 in Pensacola, Florida, United States.
Bill Kurtis Family – Education
He was born to Wilma Mary Horton and William A. Kuretich, a Croatian-born United States Marine Corps brigadier general and decorated WWII soldier. their father’s military career involved substantial travel for their family. After his retirement, the family settled in Independence, Kansas. His sister, Jean Schodorf, is the former Kansas Senate Majority Whip from Wichita, Kansas. Kurtis’ father was a cousin of Frank Kurtis, an Indianapolis 500 Hall of Famer.
Kurtis’ 38-year-old son, Scott, died on July 20, 2009, at his father’s Kansas cattle ranch. He graduated from Independence High School in 1958, from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism in 1962, and from Washburn University School of Law with a Juris Doctorate in 1966. While in law school, he worked part-time for WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas.
Is Bill Kurtis Married? – Children
Kurtis and his wife, Helen, have two children: a daughter and a son. Scott and Mary Kristen were born in 1970 and 1966, respectively. Helen, Kurtis’ wife, died of breast cancer at the age of 36 on June 11, 1977, in Omaha, Nebraska. On December 13, 2017, he married his 40-year partner, Donna La Pietra, a veteran Chicago television news producer. La Pietra was Kurtis’ partner in Kurtis Productions. Kurtis owns residences in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and Mettawa, Illinois.
How much does Bill Curtis make? – Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $15 million.
Bill Kurtis Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
Kurtis participated on NPR’s news quiz show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! multiple times beginning in 2009, replacing usual announcer Carl Kasell. On May 24, 2014, he permanently succeeded Kasell. Kurtis reads three news-related limericks in one portion of the show, leaving the final word or phrase for competitors to complete.
Bill Kurtis Career
On the night of June 8, 1966, Kurtis left a bar survey class at Washburn to fill in for a companion at WIBW-television to secure the 6 o’clock news. Serious weather conditions was moving toward Topeka, so Kurtis remained to refresh a few meteorological forecasts. At 7:00 p.m., while on the air, a cyclone was located by WIBW cameraman Ed Rutherford southwest of the city. In something like 15 seconds one more locating came in: “It’s cleared out a high rise.” Kurtis’ admonition – “For the wellbeing of God, hide” – became inseparable from the Cyclone episode grouping of June 1966 that left 18 dead and harmed hundreds more.
Kurtis and the WIBW broadcast group stayed on the air for 24 straight hours to cover the underlying cyclone and its fallout. As the main TV channel around and one of only a handful of exceptional radio broadcasts left whole, WIBW turned into a correspondences center for crisis tasks. The experience changed Kurtis’ vocation way from regulation to communicate news. In the span of 90 days, in the wake of seeing his work covering the twister, WBBM-television in Chicago recruited Kurtis and set up for a 30-year vocation with CBS.
The year 1966 in Chicago was the start of a wild four years, and as a journalist and anchor Kurtis was in memorable occasions. He covered the local flames that followed the death of Martin Luther Ruler Jr. also, again when Robert F. Kennedy was shot. Challenges the Vietnam War overwhelmed the 1968 Vote based Public Show in Chicago, which Kurtis covered. In 1969, Kurtis created a narrative about Iva Toguri D’Aquino, “Tokyo Rose”, the main meeting since her conviction for treachery in 1949.
His announcing, alongside that of Ron Yates of the Chicago Tribune, convinced President Gerald Portage to acquit her in 1977. His lawful training became possibly the most important factor when he covered the Chicago Seven scheme preliminary in 1969, which prompted a task with CBS News in Los Angeles as reporter. One of his most memorable tasks was covering the Charles Manson murder preliminary for a considerable length of time. He additionally covered the homicide preliminaries of Angela Davis and Juan Crown and the Pentagon Papers preliminary of Daniel Ellsberg.
In 1973, Kurtis got back to Chicago to co-anchor the 10 p.m. broadcast with Walter Jacobson at WBBM-television. In 1978, his analytical center unit broke the tale of Napalm, a defoliant showered on U.S. troopers in Vietnam. After an emotional screening of the narrative in Washington, D.C., the Veterans Organization gave rules to analyze and repay those veterans impacted by Napalm. Kurtis got back to Vietnam in 1980 to cover the Vietnamese side of the story and, while there, found around 15,000 Vietnamese youngsters imagined and abandoned by Americans when the U.S. left in 1975. A story Kurtis composed for The New York Times Magazine was instrumental in getting unique status for the kids to enter the US, where they live today.
In 1982, Kurtis joined Diane Sawyer on The CBS Morning News, the organization broadcast from New York City. The two were likewise on the CBS Early Morning News, which circulated an hour sooner on most CBS stations. He additionally secured three CBS Reports: The Plane That Tumbled from the Sky, The Brilliant Leaf, and The Endowment of Life.
He got back to WBBM-television in 1985. In 1986, Kurtis facilitated a four-section science series on PBS called The Supernatural occurrence Planet as well as a four-section series in 1987 on the Focal Knowledge Organization. He shaped his own narrative creation organization, Kurtis Creations, in 1988, that very year he delivered “Return to Chernobyl” for the PBS series Nova. Kurtis described almost 1,000 narratives, and Kurtis Creations delivered almost 500 narratives for series like The New Pilgrims on PBS; Insightful Reports and Cold Case Documents for A&E; and Examining History for the Set of experiences Channel. He additionally facilitated American Equity, delivered by Pinnacles Creations. For CNBC, the organization has created more than 200 episodes of American Avarice.
In 1994, Kurtis got a tape showing Richard Bit, sentenced for killing eight understudy medical caretakers in Chicago in 1966, having prison sex and utilizing drugs inside the most extreme security office known as Stateville Restorative Center in Joliet, Illinois. He circulated a report on WBBM-television and created a narrative for A&E Organization, bringing about the most far reaching developments to the Illinois correctional framework in its set of experiences.
Kurtis re-cooperated with Walter Jacobson in 2010 to have WBBM-television’s 6 p.m. broadcast; they had co-facilitated the station’s appraisals predominant 10 p.m. broadcast from 1973 to Kurtis’ move in 1982 to The CBS Morning News. Having accomplished the expected evaluations support for the report, Kurtis and Jacobson resigned as commentators in 2013.
Kurtis has gotten two Peabody Grants, various Emmy Grants, grants from the Abroad Press Club, and a DuPont Grant. He has been drafted into the Illinois and Kansas Corridors of Notoriety. In 1998, he was granted the College of Kansas William Allen White reference.
He is the storyteller of a mixed media book by Joe Earn, We Intrude on This Transmission, with a foreword by Walter Cronkite and an epilog by Brian Williams, which was a spin-off of the Edward R. Murrow record collection I Can Hear It Now. Kurtis has composed three books: On Task (1984), Capital punishment Being investigated (2004), and Grassland Table Cookbook (2008).
In June 2015, Kurtis started lead facilitating obligations of As the decades progressed, a day to day news magazine that covers verifiable occasions from that specific day since the coming of TV. His co-has are journalists Kerry Sayers and Ellee Pai Hong. The program finished when Many years was rebranded to Snappy Parody in February 2023.
