Rest in Peace, Bernard Birnbaum

Bernard Birnbaum (CBS)

Thanksgiving 2009 might have been a mourning day for CBS News family. Its legendary former producer Bernard Birnbaum died at the age of 89.

Birnbaum exhaled his last breath at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y. on Thursday, after having a heart attack while visiting his family on Long Island.

Born in 1920, Birnbaum won a Fulbright scholarship. His cinema education in Rome and his experience in World War II as combat cameraman had granted him a talent in storytelling journalism, which led to seven Emmy Awards.

Birnbaum had joined the CBS News since 1951. He covered many global events from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to Watergate scandal to the Vietnam war, for which he traveled to the war zone seven times during 1962-1973. He was a Sunday Morning producer since 1990.

“Bernie was a mentor to generations of CBS news producers and correspondents,” said CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus.

Being a legendary himself, Birnbaum worked with many legendary CBS News correspondents, including Howard K. Smith, Charles Collingwood, Mike Wallace, Eric Sevareid and Morton Dean. He was an all-out journalist: a photographer, a director and a storyteller that creates innovative television journalism.

He produced Adventure, Eyewitness to History and The American Parade, co-produced CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and credited as the senior producer for On the Road with Charles Kuralt. In 1964 both Birnbaum and Kuralt produced Christmas in Appalachia, an award-winning documentary on the plight of unemployed miners in eastern Kentucky. It spotted on poverty in America for the first time, granted Birnbaum and Kuralt Sigma Delta Chi award and triggered President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”.

Being married to former Ronnie Gutman in 1950, who passed away in 2005, leaving him, their two daughters, Deborah and Amy Birnhaum (a producer for CBS News as well), and four grandchildren. He had lived in Larchmont since 1956.

Birnbaum’s funeral will be held on Tuesday in Larchmont, N.Y.

[ via CBS News ]

Popularity: 1% [?]