[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 38 (Tuesday, April 12, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: April 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO CARL WILLIAMS
______
HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.
of tennessee
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, April 12, 1994
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay
tribute to Mr. Carl Williams of WBIR-TV in Knoxville for his long and
distinguished career as a television news anchor in east Tennessee.
Mr. Williams began his career in 1940 as a disc jockey for a
``wired'' radio station in Oak Ridge, where he and his colleagues used
telephone lines to transmit their sound because the secret nature of
the work being performed in Oak Ridge prevented them from broadcasting
openly.
From Oak Ridge, Mr. Williams moved to WHBT radio in Harriman, TN,
where he was first charged with keeping listeners abreast of the daily
news. His talent in this area was immediately obvious to John Hart,
then the general manager of WBIR, who brought Williams aboard for
Channel 10's maiden television broadcast on August 12, 1956.
Since then, east Tennesseans have relied on Carl Williams to bring
them the news of the day and to keep them informed about issues that he
knew they considered important. After more than 37 years of service,
Williams has truly become an institution in our area, and his presence
on the air will be sorely missed.
I know I speak for everyone in east Tennessee in congratulating Carl
on his retirement and thanking him for being a part of our lives for so
many years. We certainly wish him the very best in the years to come.
[From the News-Sentinel]
Anchor
(By Don Williams)
Other journalists will recognize this as a bad lead . . .
Carl Williams retiring? No way!
But how else can you honestly start this story. Williams is
more than an institution. He is part of the soundtrack of our
times. His folksy delivery, as if he's sharing a secret as
much as reporting the news, stays with you.
Williams will make his last broadcast Friday on the noon
edition of Action 10 News. Gene Patterson and Kristin Hoke
will take over as morning anchors.
Williams smiling face has been on the regional TV landscape
since, well, since he signed WBIR-TV on the air.
He still remembers the words: ``With permission of the
Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., WBIR-
TV in Knoxville signs on the air on Aug. 12, 1956.''
That makes more than 37 years that Williams has been on TV,
mostly as an anchor of one or more news programs daily.
During that time, he has seen WBIR's news division go from a
shoe-string operation run by a three-man crew editing
unwieldy film footage to a sophisticated video and computer
operation employing dozens of highly skilled technicians.
Unlike the machines, however, Williams has felt himself
slowing down.
Two operations for cataracts in 1991 and recurrent chest
pains are clues enough that it's time to retire, says
Knoxville's most durable anchorman.
His most memorable story?
Williams doesn't hesitate.
On Jan. 5, 1970, he got a tip from a friend that Joseph
Yablonski, leader of a dissident faction of the United Mine
Workers, had been murdered along with his wife and daughter
in Erie, Pa. Williams quickly wrote a 10-second story just
relating the bare facts and promising an update later.
At 10 minutes and 15 seconds after 6 o'clock, just after
Williams reported the murders, several phone calls went out
from LaFollette to UMW President Tony Boyle. Using South
Central Bell phone records, the FBI was able to arrest
several East Tennesseans. The murder conspiracy unraveled,
eventually implicating top UMW brass. Those arrested
subsequently included Boyle, who died in 1985 while serving a
prison sentence. Williams remembers Boyle's trial.
``He came driving up in a limousine that was a block and a
half long. When they got him to the courthouse they put him
in a wheelchair, then, at the back of the courthouse, he got
up and ran inside.''
Several months later Williams found himself flying back and
forth to Erie, Pa., to testify that he had delivered the
newscast that helped flush out the killers. He acknowledges
that the FBI used him, if for a good cause.
``I was had,'' he laughs, ``but at least I got the story.''
Williams' career has been a true natural product of the
broadcast age.
He was born on Jan. 3, 1929, and raised as one of five
children in Fairland, Ind. The fledgling Radio Corporation of
America was only 10 years old. Williams' parents were out of
work for most of the Depression. So when his father Jessie
Carl and mother Ofa Williams heard of a TVA project under way
near Knoxville in 1940--the building of Watts Bar Dam--they
moved.
``I loved it here,'' Williams recalls. ``I was used to
flat, level farming country. Here I came to rolling hills. I
made up my mind while I was hunting and fishing that I'd stay
here all my life.''
It was in Oak Ridge that he met Bill Polack, who operated a
``wired music'' radio program, from Ridge Recreation Hall,
using telephone lines to transmit sound. Williams took a job
as a disc jockey, earning $15 per week. He supplemented his
income selling records at The Music Box, an Oak Ridge record
store.
Williams attended Oak Ridge High School, graduating in
1947. That same year his family moved back to Indiana,
interrupting his fledgling career.
``I hated it. Everybody was gone that I knew.''
When he heard that radio station WHBT was going on the air
in Harriman, an older brother bought him train fare back to
Tennessee. He worked at Harriman until 1954. That was when
Wayne Hudson, a former University of Tennessee student, hired
Williams to read the news and spin records for WROL radio and
to emcee a dance show for WROL-TV.
``I was the Dick Clark of WROL-TV,'' says Williams.
John Hart, general manager of WBIR Radio, saw the show and
told program director Neil Branch to hire Williams for WBIR,
Channel 10, which was about to begin broadcasting on TV.
``I came on two weeks before it went on the air,''
remembers Williams. ``In those days you did everything.
Commercials, station breaks. The time came in early 1957 to
read a newscast live.'' Based on that performance he became
an anchorman.
In 1958, WBIR moved to its present quarters on Hutchison
Avenue, off North Broadway, but the early broadcasts took
place in a building atop Sharp's Ridge, near the station's
antenna.
``The whole thing was no bigger than our newsroom out
there,'' says Williams, looking out an open door where
reporters are busily tidying up loose ends for the noon
edition of Action 10 News. ``We had three people in the news
department.''
It is a typical Monday for Carl Williams.
He gets up at 2:45 a.m., walks his mixed-breed border
collie-shelty, jumps in the shower, gets dressed, and is on
the road by 3:30 a.m. By about 3:45 he makes a stop on
Chapman Highway to pick up a morning paper. Ten minutes later
he's at work.
By 4 a.m. he signs onto his computer, picks up his phone
and starts making calls. He phones between 35 and 40
sources--sheriff's departments, hospitals, highway patrol
offices throughout East Tennessee--between 4 and 4:30 a.m.
Then he meets with Jeff Gurney, producer of Action 10 News
Today, which runs from 6 until 7 a.m.
After that show there is more phoning, more meetings, and a
whittling of stories from the noon budget. By 11:30 a.m.
Williams is sitting in his office as last minute changes are
made.
About 11:50 a.m. he walks into the studio.
Byron Webre, spiffy in a double-breasted suit for his
stand-up weather report, comes in. Williams sits behind his
desk where recessed screens show what the viewer at home will
see, along with a computer screen that carries current
Associated Press stories.
``Two minutes Carl,'' a cameraman says.
``You ready to go pardner?'' Williams asks Webre.
``Yes. Ready for your last headline on a Monday,'' goes
Webre.
``Let's make it a good one,'' Williams says.
Time ticks down, then Williams' voice, abrupt but somber,
deep and slightly nasal rolls out, ``Good afternoon, a 19-
year-old man is dead. . . .''
He changes cadence as he updates the NAFTA debate, reports
a boating accident, floods in Mississippi, updates the Joey
Buttafucco trial, a freedom flight from Cuba, then turns it
over to Webre.
Webre reports that it's going to be rainy the next couple
of days as springlike thunderstorms roll through. Then
Williams is back. In all, he anchors 11 stories in less than
20 minutes, allowing for weather and ``Mr. Food,'' a cooking
show. Then he signs off. Four more noon reports to go.
Back in his office, Williams reflects on his leave taking.
He wants to fish and hunt and play with his grandchildren.
Twice married and divorced, he has three grown children.
Williams blames the pressure and the irregular hours for
his failed marriages.
``This place is notorious as being a pressure cooker,'' he
says. He mentions others who had trouble dealing with the
stress, some who have had heart problems.
``You're fighting that clock up there all the time. The
anchor has to pull everything together. You work your tail
off trying to make the ratings look good, but all the time
you're on top you know there's somebody shooting at you who
would love to be where you are.''
Williams remembers 1976, the year he slipped in the ratings
and management took him off the 11 o'clock news.
``Channel 6 had just brought on Sam Brown to anchor its
evening news programs. He was a young handsome dude, I hated
him,'' Williams says laughing. ``Not really, we're friends.
``But it's a blow to the ego,'' Williams says. ``It's human
nature to want to have our egos inflated. I'm a people
person. I like people. We're all in this business because we
want to be loved, but we can't force it. They've got to like
us.''
Williams watched other anchors come and go before Channel
10 settled on Bill Williams as permanent news anchor, later
adding Edye Ellis to the team.
It was about 1978 that Williams suggested WBIR begin a noon
news program. He took the noon anchor slot and has never
trailed in the ratings, he says, despite strong programming
from WATE.
The secret to his longevity has been his ability to shrug
off the pressure.
``I learned to turn it off when I walked out that door,''
he says. He gets up, puts on his jacket and walks toward the
door.
``I've got this house on the lake. There's a forest behind
it where I can hunt--deer, rabbits, squirrels--and water in
front where I can fish.
``I'm not leaving because I don't like the work any longer.
It's just time to go. I've got to find out whether I can do
this retirement thing.''