Eric Sevareid

Sevareid was born in central North Dakota at Velva to Alfred Eric and Clara Pauline Elizabeth Sevareid (née Hougen). After the failure of the bank in Velva in 1925,[6] his family moved to nearby Minot, and then to Minneapolis, Minnesota,[7] settling on 30th Avenue North. He attended Central High School in Minneapolis.[8] Sevareid graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1935. A descendant of Norwegian immigrants, he preserved a strong bond with Norway throughout his life.[9]

Sevareid was adventurous from a young age; several days after he graduated from Central High School in 1930, he and his friend Walter Port embarked on an expedition sponsored by the Minneapolis Star to travel by canoe from Minneapolis to York Factory, on Hudson Bay. They canoed up the Minnesota River and its tributary, the Little Minnesota River, to Browns Valley, portaged to Lake Traverse, and descended the Bois des Sioux River to the Red River of the North, which led to Lake Winnipeg. They then went down the Nelson River, Gods River, and Hayes River to Hudson Bay, a trip of 2,250 miles (3,620 km).[10] Sevareid's book Canoeing with the Cree (1935) was the result of this canoe trip and is still in print.[11]

At age 18, Sevareid entered journalism as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal while he was a student at the University of Minnesota in political science. He continued his studies abroad, first in London, and then at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he also worked as an editor for United Press. Sevareid then became city editor of the Paris Herald Tribune, and later joined CBS as a foreign correspondent based in Paris.

Sevareid broadcast the Fall of Paris and followed the French government from there to Bordeaux and then Vichy before he left France for London and later Washington, D.C. He was appointed as CBS's Washington bureau chief in July 1942.[12]

He wrote about the Plains influence on his life in his early memoir, Not So Wild A Dream (1946). The book is still in print and covers his life in Velva, his family, the Hudson Bay trip, his hitchhiking around the U.S., mining in the Sierra Nevada, the Great Depression years, his early journalism, and (especially) his experiences in World War II.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan with a group at NBC's taping of its "Christmas in Washington" special in the Pension Building in Washington, D.C. Left to right: NBC News anchor Roger Mudd, CBS News reporter Eric Sevareid, entertainer Dinah Shore, actress Diahann Carroll, actor and musician John Schneider, President Ronald Reagan, First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor Ben Vereen, and singer Debby Boone.

After the war, Sevareid continued to work for CBS. He had begun his own program, Eric Sevareid and the News, on June 27, 1942, on CBS; it ran for five minutes, starting at 8:55 (ET) on Saturdays and Sundays.[17] In 1946, he reported on the founding of the United Nations and then penned Not So Wild a Dream (University of Missouri Press, 1946). The book, whose title comes from part of the closing passage of Norman Corwin's radio play "On a Note of Triumph," appeared in eleven printings and became one of the primary sources on the lives of the generation of Americans who had lived through the Great Depression, only to confront the horrors of World War II. In the 1976 edition of the book, Sevareid wrote, "It was a lucky stroke of timing to have been born and lived as an American in this last generation. It was good fortune to be a journalist in Washington, now the single news headquarters in the world since ancient Rome. But we are not Rome; the world is too big, too varied."[13]

Sevareid always considered himself a writer first and often felt uneasy behind a microphone and even less comfortable on television. Nonetheless, he worked extensively for CBS News on television for decades after the war. During the middle and the end of 1950s, Sevareid found himself on television as the host and science reporter of CBS's Conquest. He also served as the head of the CBS Washington bureau from 1946 to 1954 and was one of the early critics of Joseph McCarthy's anticommunism tactics.

Sevareid interviewing President Richard Nixon at the White House for A Conversation With the President (1970)

Sevareid married the former Lois Finger. They had twin sons, Peter and Michael, born in Paris while Sevareid was stationed there as a war correspondent for CBS.[21]

Sevareid's second marriage was to Belen Marshall. They had a daughter, Cristina, born in New York while he was working as a commentator at the New York bureau.

Sevareid died of stomach cancer in Washington, D.C., on July 9, 1992, at age 79.[22][23][24][25]

A portion of the Eric Sevareid Library at the University of Minnesota

• 1950, 1964, 1976: Peabody Award[26]
• 1954: Alfred I. duPont Award[27]
• 1964: State of North Dakota Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award[28]
• 1965: New York Newspaper Guild Page One Award
• 1977: Paul White Award, Radio Television Digital News Association[29]
• Emmy Award winner:[30]
  • Best News Reporter or Commentator – 1955
  • Best News Commentary – 1958
• 1993: Inducted posthumously into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame[31]
• On October 5, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that it would honor Sevareid and four other journalists of the 20th century with first-class rate postage stamps, to be issued on Tuesday, April 22, 2008. Sevareid's award was in recognition of his World War II reporting and his criticism of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communism campaign[32]

• Alfred and Clara Sevareid House

• Canoeing with the Cree, 1935, reprinted 1968 ISBN 0-87351-152-2
• Not So Wild a Dream (autobiography), 1946, reissued 1976 ISBN 0-8262-1014-7
• In One Ear: 107 Snapshots of Men and Events which Make a Far-Reaching Panorama of the American Situation at Mid-Century (essays), Knopf, 1952.
• Small Sounds in the Night: A Collection of Capsule Commentaries on the American Scene, Knopf, 1956.
• This is Eric Sevareid (essays), McGraw, 1964.
• (With Robert A. Smith) Washington: Magnificent Capital, Doubleday, 1965.
• (With John Case) Enterprise: The Making of Business in America, McGraw-Hill, 1983.

• Raymond A. Schroth (1995) The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (Steerforth Press) ISBN 1883642124
• T. Harrell Allen (2017) The Voice of Reason: Eric Sevareid's CBS Commentaries (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform) ISBN 978-1547027521

• Yesterday's News Excerpt from "Canoeing with the Cree" series, Minneapolis Star, September 6, 1930
• Farewell speech on YouTube Recording of final broadcast message, November 30, 1977.
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Research Papers for Sevareid Biography Finding Aid at Loyola University New Orleans
• Eric Sevareid Awards Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association
• Eric Sevareid papers Library of Congress Manuscript Division