Profile: Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist

"I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter."

As a young boy growing up in a tough neighborhood of Houston, Dan Rather dreamed of becoming a newspaper man, and his mother nursed the hope that he would be the first member of the family to go to college. But with scant family resources, and no access to student aid, it seemed unlikely the boy would have any future other than manual labor in the oil fields.

When a hoped-for football scholarship fell through, Rather put himself through college with an assortment of odd jobs including part-time work at a tiny radio station in Huntsville, Texas. This was the beginning of one of the most distinguished careers in American broadcast journalism.

During his unparalleled 24-year run as anchor of the CBS Evening News (1981 to 2005), his face and voice were as familiar to millions of Americans as if he were one of the family. Since the day in 1963 when he reported the death of President Kennedy to a startled nation, Dan Rather has covered every major news story of our times, and earned a reputation as "the hardest working man in broadcast journalism."