[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7481-H7482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         IN MEMORY OF BILL BURNS, PITTSBURGH BROADCASTING ICON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Coble). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the floor of the House to 
lament the death and to pay tribute to a gentleman who for literally 
millions of people in the Pittsburgh region has been a father figure, 
has been a source of information and inspiration. His name is William 
Michael Burns.
  Bill Burns, as he was known to so many of his viewers on the 
television

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news, was for 40 years a television personality and was really the 
anchor and the conscience of many television journalists in a medium 
that was just finding itself in the 1950's and the 1960's, in the 
1970's and the 1980's when Bill Burns came to anchor many of the 
newscasts on KDKA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh. It was my honor 
during the last 12 years of Bill's career to sit very near him, to 
learn from him and to work with him in that very same newsroom.
  Bill Burns has passed away after so many years and is really an icon 
to those people in broadcasting. Walter Cronkite has said of Bill Burns 
that he could have come to New York to be with the network any time he 
wanted to, but the problem with Bill Burns, if there was indeed a 
problem, was that Pittsburgh was his home. It was where he always 
wanted to live. It was the community that he loved. It was where he 
wanted to serve.
  Bill Burns was born in the tiny town of Houtzdale, PA, in Clearfield 
County. I remember doing news stories there myself when I was a young 
cub reporter at channel 10 in Altoona. He always joked about the fact 
that here he was, a used sewing machine salesman from Houtzdale, PA, 
and Uncle Sam gave him a gun, let him off a boat near Normandy, and 
told him to take on the Third Reich's greatest army. He bore the 
injuries of a very heavy, deep shrapnel wound to his leg. He was 
awarded the Purple Heart and carried a brace on that leg for the rest 
of his life.
  It was always amazing as he carried his 6-foot-plus carriage into any 
news conference the respect that he commanded not only from his fellow 
reporters both in the print and in electronic journalism, but from the 
people that he interviewed as well. One newscaster, another friend of 
mine, Adam Lynch, talked about the story when they were all standing in 
an area waiting for people to come out to give them an interview and 
the police said to all the reporters, ``You have to stay here.'' Here 
comes Bill Burns with that leg brace on and that stoic walk that he 
had, brisked right by all of these people that were behaving dutifully, 
having been told to wait in a specific place. A uniformed police 
officer reached over and opened the door and allowed Bill Burns to go 
in the room. He was the only reporter that was able to have access and 
to get the story.
  He was respected because he cared about not only delivering the news, 
but he cared so much about the community and the accuracy of the news 
that he reported. If only just a small part of that honesty and 
integrity that Bill Burns represented to television journalism were to 
exist throughout that medium today, it would be a much finer medium.
  Those of us who were young reporters, who had to labor under a tough 
taskmaster, know that when you had to go out in the Pittsburgh market, 
and particularly working at KDKA with Bill Burns, and you had to cover 
a news story, if you could answer the questions that Bill had for you 
when you got back from the story, there was no problem facing the 
television audience that night. He was fantastic at debriefing a 
reporter, making sure that before you came on his newscast, that you 
knew what it was you were talking about, that you had done the A's, the 
B's and the C's of good news gathering.
  And, in fact, right up to his retirement in 1989, he worked many 
hours every day, 5, 6, 7 days a week if he was needed, well into his 
seventies. If the reporters who were on the street every day had a 
problem gathering a news story, if they did not know who to talk to or 
where to go, all they had to do was talk to Bill Burns. Bill had 
contacts.
  He was respected very much throughout the entire community by those 
who worked with him, those who competed against him. In fact, Bill 
Burns commanded the ratings in the city of Pittsburgh. I do not think 
that any major television news market will ever be dominated again by 
one particular person. It was not unlike Bill Burns to be able to 
achieve numbers of 60, 65 percent of the television viewing audience 
watching his noon newscast.
  One of the greatest moments I know in Bill Burns' life came back on 
October 18, 1976, the year of our Nation's bicentennial, when he was 
able to sit shoulder to shoulder with his daughter Patty Burns. They 
anchored the news together. It was jokingly called the Patty and Daddy 
Show.
  To his daughter Patty Burns, who is a wonderful lady and a great 
friend, I wish her all of our sympathies. To his son Michael, I wish 
them all of our sympathies. We will miss Bill Burns. We will miss that 
arching eyebrow as he gave us the news. That, of course, will never 
happen again.
  To Bill Burns1, wherever he is, I would like to say, good night, good 
luck, and good news tomorrow.

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