16 Facts About David Brinkley

1.

David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.

2.

David Brinkley wrote three books, including the 1988 bestseller Washington Goes to War, about how World War II transformed the nation's capital.

3.

David Brinkley's books were largely based on his own observations as a young reporter in the city.

4.

David Brinkley began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School.

5.

David Brinkley attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University, before entering service in the United States Army in 1940.

6.

In 1952, David Brinkley began providing Washington reporting on NBC Television's evening news program, the Camel News Caravan, hosted by John Cameron Swayze.

7.

When Huntley retired from the anchor chair in 1970, the evening news program was renamed NBC Nightly News, and David Brinkley co-anchored the broadcast with John Chancellor and Frank McGee.

8.

An unhappy David Brinkley left NBC in 1981; NBC Magazine was his last show for that network.

9.

Days before he announced his retirement from regular news coverage, David Brinkley made a rare, on-air mistake during evening coverage of the 1996 United States presidential election at a moment when he thought he was on commercial break.

10.

David Brinkley would offer Clinton an apology during a one-on-one interview a week later.

11.

David Brinkley had been a journalist for over fifty years and had been anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program for just over forty years.

12.

David Brinkley's career extended from the end of the radio age to the age of the internet.

13.

Bush called him "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism" but David Brinkley was much more humble.

14.

David Brinkley married the former Flora Ann Fischer in 1946 and had three sons; they divorced in 1972.

15.

David Brinkley died in 2003 at his home in Houston from complications of a fall suffered at his vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, according to his son, John David Brinkley.

16.

David Brinkley's body is interred at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina.