A List
4/14/08

Newsman Tom Brokaw To Speak At St. Lawrence

CANTON - St. Lawrence University's Contemporary Issues Forum presents NBC News Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw on Wednesday, April 30, at 2 p.m. in Gulick Theatre. He will give a talk called "Life Is Not Virtual."

For this event, free tickets are required. Any one person may request up to two tickets, which will be available for in-person pick-up on Monday, April 21, beginning at 8 a.m., at the Student Center Information Desk. No tickets will be mailed.

Brokaw served for 21 years as the anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News." As a special correspondent, Brokaw continues to report and produce long-form documentaries and provide expertise during breaking news events for NBC News. He is the author of five books, including his 2007 bestseller BOOM! Voices of the Sixties.

Brokaw has received numerous honors, including the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement award and the Emmy award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was inducted as a fellow into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition, he has received the Records of Achievement award from the Foundation for the National Archives; the Association of the U.S. Army honored him with their highest award, the George Catlett Marshall Medal, first ever to a journalist; and he was the recipient of the West Point Sylvanus Thayer award, in recognition of devoted service to bringing exclusive interviews and stories to public attention.

His long-form documentaries for NBC News, "Tom Brokaw Reports," have tackled such diverse topics as literacy, affirmative action, drunk driving, corporate scandals, immigration policies and race. In addition to these reports, he has collaborated with NBC News' Peacock Productions for Discovery's Emmy-winning documentary "Global Warming: What You Need to Know with Tom Brokaw," and the History channel's two-hour documentary, "1968 with Tom Brokaw," in 2007.

Prior to stepping down as anchor of "Nightly News," Brokaw traveled to Iraq in June 2004 to cover the handover of power and reported for five days for all NBC News programs and MSNBC. In 1998, Brokaw became a best-selling author with the publication of The Greatest Generation. In his fifth best-selling book, BOOM! Voices of the Sixties, Brokaw shares a series of remembrances and reflections of the time based on his experiences and over 50 interviews with a wide variety of well-known artists, politicians, activists, business leaders and journalists, as well as lesser-known figures, including a daughter of a former Mississippi segregationist governor, Vietnam veterans, civil rights activists, health care pioneers, environmentalists and war protesters.

Interviews with St. Lawrence University Vice President for Administrative Operations Thomas Coakley and his wife, Nellie, both veterans of the Vietnam War, are included in the book and the related television documentary.

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