American broadcast journalist and correspondent with CBS News from 1939 through 1977, commentator on TV’s CBS Evening News from 1964-1977, and consultant with CBS News after 1977. He authored “Not So Wild A Dream,” 1946, and “This is Eric Sevareid,” 1964.
He grew up in Velva, N.D. with two brothers, the son of a small-town banker. His grandfather had immigrated from Norway a half-century earlier. Sevareid’s interest in journalism was sparked by the editor of the weekly Velva Journal, who would let him sit in the office and read books. His family moved to Minneapolis in the 1920s, and at 17, he and a school friend took a 2,200-mile canoe trek from Minneapolis to York Factory on Canada’s Hudson Bay to prove that it was possible to travel entirely by water straight through the continent. The trek became a book in 1935, “Canoeing with the Cree.” The Minneapolis Star paid him to write about the trip, and he was then hired as a cub reporter.
In the summer of 1932, he hitchhiked to California to mine gold, then returned to the University of Minnesota. After graduating, he went back to the Minneapolis Journal only to be let go due to the economy. He then went to Europe, studied at the London School of Economics and the Alliance Française in Paris.
In 1938, he took a job with the Herald Tribune, then received a call from Edward R. Murrow a year later recruiting him for a radio job. Sevareid broadcast war news to the United States from various European locations, was the last American to broadcast from Paris before it fell to the Germans, and the first to report that France was about to surrender. Afterward, he joined Murrow in London to broadcast during the World War II bombing raids. He returned to the United States in 1940 and was assigned to the CBs Bureau in Washington, where he stayed until 1943.
In 1946, he began serving in the CBS Washington bureau, partly as chief correspondent, noted for his analysis and wit during radio coverage of the 1948,1952 and 1956 presidential elections. He switched to television in the 60s. In 1964, he became a regular on the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite,” providing short commentaries on a wide variety of subject.
He was married three times: to Lois Finger from 1935-1962, by whom he had twin sons; to Belen Marshall, a Cuban-born composer with whom he had a daughter from 1963-1974; and a third wife, Suzanne St. Pierre in 1979.
He retired in 1977, though continued as a consultant to CBS. His awards included the Overseas Press Club Award, the George Polk Memorial Award, two Emmys and the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Sevareid died of cancer on 7/09/1992.
Link to Wikipedia biography