|
|
|
Peter Jennings was one of the greatest long time anchors for ABC’s world News Tonight. The legend died on a Sunday in Manhattan after struggling with lung cancer for four months. This was a real blow to the media world. Jennings was a high school dropout who transformed himself into a prominent journalist of his time. The Canadian American journalist had become the most popular and loved journalist all over.
Background and History of the Legend
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings was born in Toronto in 1938 July 29th. He had one sister called Sarah and she was the only son of Elizabeth Osborne and Charles Jennings. His father Charles Jennings was a journalist for the CBC. You can say that his father was his inspiration.
Peter Jennings unlike many journalist started working at the age of nine. He started by broadcasting for a show called Peter’s people. This was just a 30 minutes show broadcasted every Saturday on CBC radio show for kids. During the shows debut, his father was on a business trip and when he returned he was not happy with the network putting his son on air.
He went to Trinity College at the age of 11 in Port Hope. In college he outshined in sports. In 1950s he was then transferred to Lisgar Collegiate Institute. That was after his father was moved to the Ottawa headquarters.
He was however not a book worm and blamed his 10th grade failure to his love of girls, comic books and because his was just plain lazy. After falling and dropping out of 10th grade he went to Carleton where he said ‘it only lasted for 10 minutes’ before he dropped out again. He also went to the University of Ottawa.
Jennings passion was to follow on his fathers footsteps but just after ‘all’ the schooling he was first employed as a bank teller. If this was not bad enough the company located him to a small town of Prescott instead of the Havana branch where he was hoping. He was later transferred to a Brockville branch. This gave him an opportunity to try out acting and he appeared in several music productions like the Damn Yankees.
In 1959 back in Brockville that’s where the broadcasting star started rising. After getting a few broadcasting jobs Peter was declared the youngest anchor ever. He has done many major stories and won a lot of awards in his years.
| |
