[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.''