Book note: The Generous Years, by Chet Huntley

Speaking of Chet Huntley (see the post before this one), his book The Generous Years: Remembrances of a frontier boyhood is a pretty good read, and not at all what I expected, having only known the man from his night after night newscasts with David Brinkley. The Huntley-Brinkley Report and I started out in life at about the same time, which means that I didn't know what it was like to live in a world without it. It was a shock, I remember, when Huntley retired.

We played at putting on our own Huntley-Brinkley reports, complete with the signature sign-off - Good night, David / Good night, Chet/ Good night, Fill-in-name-here (repeated however many times it took to take care of the whole group of kids). It could get pretty ridiculous, which was the point. We were playing.

When that newscast ended, it was like an era ended with it.

The Generous Years appears to be out of print, but there are quite a few used copies floating around for sale yet.

While we're on the subject of deceased broadcasters, remember Lowell Thomas? He wrote some fairly interesting books between broadcasts himself...