Charles Kuralt's PEOPLE

Reviewed by Brooks Preik (Spirit of the Carolinas, Winter 2003)

Long before he achieved journalistic fame with his popular CBS News series "On the Road," a 22-year-old virtually unknown North Carolinian named Charles Kuralt wrote a remarkable series of award-winning "People" columns for The Charlotte News.  The folksy, easy-going style that would become his trademark was already apparent in these early essays. In giving this collection of 170 articles the Scripps-Howard Ernie Pyle Memorial Award in 1957, the judges commented "Kuralt's writing is sensitive, warm with affection for obscure people, and with excellent touches of humor where that is needed."

Ralph Grizzle, author of a very successful biographical portrait entitled Remembering Charles Kuralt, published two years ago, discovered these captivating vignettes while doing research for his book.  Grizzle was so taken with the stories that he decided to rescue them from the hidden spaces where old newspaper microfilm gathers dust and compile them in their own special book appropriately titled Charles Kuralt's PEOPLE, which was released the first of December. It is fortunate for Kuralt fans that Ralph Grizzle made this commitment; these journalistic gems are definitely worth reading and still carry a strong inspirational message nearly 50 years later.

Fresh out of journalism school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Charles Kuralt fancied himself a sort of Damon Runyon of the South.  "I carried a battered Rolleicord camera over my shoulder for taking a picture to go with my column.  I felt there was a kind of romance in my job," he said later. In his daily ramblings, Kuralt met the likes of Israel Smith who collected junk by day and played the violin at night. He told how Smith had been educated at New York's Julliard School of Music. "But there's no money in Mozart," the junkman told him. "There is money in piles of lamp bases, garage roofs and airplane motors," the journalist concluded.

Then there is the story of a young modern dance teacher, Alice Newton, busily engaged in instructing her students against a backdrop of beautiful paintings at the Mint Museum. Alice not only taught the class but also provided a rhythmic accompaniment to keep them all in step by beating a tom-tom. This piece bears the catchy title, "Alice Newton Beats the Tom-Tom for Modern Dance in Charlotte."  Alice Newton, now in her 70s, lives in Wilmington.  She's put aside her talent for the tom-tom but loves to read. She was thrilled to learn that her story will be retold in this brand new Kuralt collection.  Somewhere among her memorabilia is the original newspaper clipping with a photograph of her and the aforementioned musical instrument.

Along with the essays, Grizzle has laced the book with defining quotes by friends and colleagues of Charles Kuralt.  For instance, one by Bud Cox, book editor for The Charlotte News, who said: "He wrote about people's troubles and triumphs. There was nothing of what used to be called the sob sister element in his writing. If somebody was having a bad time, his writing reflected that. But it was not "bringing out the crying towel" by any means. There was an absence of anything that was unnecessary. His writing was clean and cut right to the point, and yet it reflected his own personality in a way that wasn't really obvious.

Charles Kuralt's PEOPLE is a book that can be read again and again with new insight and enjoyment each time. The essence of Kuralt's journalistic charisma was his amazing ability to capture the simple, everyday lives of ordinary people in a way that became a kind of poetry. Though times have changed dramatically over the past 50 years, there is an enduring appeal in these simple accounts that is pure Kuralt. Ralph Grizzle sums it up best when he writes: "the tone, styles and reportorial substance laid down by 22-year-old KuraltÑtrim, bright-eyed and as fresh as the starched white shirt he woreÑdiffered little from that of the balding, roll-bellied reporter who collected 13 Emmys and other awards for the stories he found in places where no one else thought to look."