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Tag: retirement

Mar 17 2021

Brokaw Papers Capture 55 Years of Journalism History

Posted on March 17, 2021March 17, 2021 by Elizabeth Riordan

At the end of January of 2021, NBC News Anchor and Correspondent Tom Brokaw announced his retirement after a remarkable 55 years of journalism. 

Brokaw, far top left, at KMTV in Omaha, which was affiliated with NBC at the time

Brokaw started his television career right here in Iowa, working at KTIV in Sioux City. He moved on KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska and then to WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia. By 1966, Brokaw joined the NBC News team reporting out of Los Angeles for KNBC. This move would launch of a long and successful career for the journalist. 

By 1973, NBC made Brokaw a White House correspondent, just in time to cover the historical Watergate scandal and follow the resignation of President Nixon. After three years, NBC made him co-host, along with Jane Pauley, of the Today Show. 

Brokaw would remain cohost of the Today Show until 1981, when he was moved to co-host Nightly News with Roger Mudd. However, Brokaw was made sole anchor a year later in September of 1983. While with Nightly News, Brokaw covered some of the largest stories of modern history, including the Challenger disaster, EDSA Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Clinton’s Impeachment, and 9/11. 

In a historic moment in journalistic history, Brokaw conducted the first one-on-one American television interviews with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a week before Gorbachev came to the United States to sign the Nuclear Arms  Reduction Treaty with President Reagan. This was the first time an American journalist interviewed a leader of the Soviet Union.

After the 2004 Presidential Elections, Brokaw stepped down as anchor of Nightly News. During his time as anchor, he had made the program the most popular news network in the United States, ranking first in the Nielsen ratings since 1996.  He stayed on as an analyst for NBC News and anchored and produced various documentaries for the network.  

Brokaw at Nightly News
Brokaw reporting at White House during Watergate

Brokaw, who turned 81 in February, is the only NBC reporter to led all three of NBC’s primary news shows: Nightly News, Today Show, and Meet the Press. Brokaw hosted Meet the Press on an interim basis after colleague and friend Tim Russert suddenly passed away in 2008. 

Now Tom Brokaw is taking the time to rest and enjoy retirement. Although, Brokaw continues to be on boards of several organizations, is still writing, and continues to work on projects for various organizations. 

In 2016, University of Iowa Libraries became home for the Tom Brokaw Papers, residing in Special Collections & Archives.  Along with the news of this retirement, Special Collections & Archives has received more items from Brokaw’s NBC office that will join the his papers and collection, continuing the story of this historic career. The items include date books, photographs from in the field as well as his time on Meet the Press, election guidebooks from the 2000s, and several records of various events and projects Brokaw was involved with. Arriving with these new materials are also 5 of Brokaw’s Emmys (he’s been nominated 39 times for an Emmy, winning 10 and receiving 1 honorary). 

The new material is being processed and will soon be open to the public. As we go through the items, though, we are reminded of the 55 years of history passing from Brokaw’s hands to ours. 

 

For more information on Brokaw’s retirement, check out the announcement from NBC

For more on the Tom Brokaw Papers: A Life & Career, check out the online finding aid from Special Collections

Posted in Collection Connection, New Acquisitions, NewsTagged archives, elizabeth riordan, NBC, retirement, tom brokaw1 Comment
Jacque Roethler showcasing exhibit
Jan 13 2020

Lanterns in their Hands: a look at a new exhibit and its curator

Posted on January 13, 2020 by Elizabeth Riordan

In the darkness of these Midwest winter months, a new exhibit comes to our reading room to shed light on nine nearly forgotten Iowa women writers. 

Jacque Roethler showcasing exhibit
Jacque Roethler stands next to her final exhibit at Special Collections

Lanterns in Their Hands: Nine Nearly Forgotten Iowa Women Writers was curated by Processing Coordinator, Jacque Roethler. The exhibit examines nine women writers whose names may have faded with time, but whose work continues to resonate with readers today. While a majority of the exhibit features the books written by these women, there are also manuscripts, photographs, end paper design, periodical appearances, and a few other ephemera pieces that accompany a brief biography written by Roethler. 

Retiring this February, this exhibit is Roethler’s encore to showcase some of her favorite material found in Special Collections.

Jacque Roethler pointing out items in her exhibit
Roethler points to interesting items about activist writer Meridel LeSueur

“What got me to the idea of doing an exhibit on nearly-forgotten Iowa women writers,” explained Roethler, ” was the book, The Plough on the Hills by Merriam Gearhart. I came across it in the Iowa Authors section one day. Here was a woman who lived in Iowa all her life and she created these poems, not sublime, but beautiful in their own right.  And I, who had lived most of my life in Iowa,  and majored in English here, had never heard of her. And I thought, ‘How sad that she’s sliding into oblivion.’ I remembered seeing books by Grace Hebard and Mary Winchell, and I hadn’t heard of them, either. I started looking and there were others like her. Women like Amy Clampitt, who worked in New York all her life, most of it in the publishing industry when suddenly, when she was 63, people began to take notice of her. She became popular – she had many poems in the New Yorker, which is the top of the heap. Then she was gone, and I hadn’t heard of her either. In fact, the only Iowa woman writer I knew about before coming to work in Special Collections was Ruth Suckow.”

As Roethler mentioned above, she was an English major here at the University of Iowa, which might explain why she has consistently been drawn to the papers of authors and poets while working here in Special Collections. Before getting to Special Collections, however, she worked at the University of Iowa’s hospital cafeteria, served as a the secretary for the African American studies department for ten years, and after getting her master’s in Library and Information Science in 1995, started working for the UI Libraries in the serials department and math library before finally coming to Special Collections. While Roethler has worked diligently on large collections like the Gallup Organization’s records and the Ken Friedman papers, some of her favorite collections to process have been those of authors like Lewis Turco, who wrote The Book of Forms, or John Gawsworth whose Georgian poetry, according to Roethler, wasn’t appreciated in his time. Working on these collections and completing their finding aids has clearly helped hone Roethler’s ability to find the remarkable in the often overlooked. 

Portrait of Octave
Portrait of Octave Thanet

“I found so many things when I put the exhibit together,” explained Roethler. “The fact that Bess Streeter Aldrich had won an O Henry Prize; that three of Dorothy Johnson’s short stories had been turned into films, all of which I HAD heard of…  that straight-laced Octave Thanet may have had a lesbian relationship with her long-time companion; that Josephine Herbst knew Hemingway well enough to write the extraordinary letter that appears in the exhibit and that that letter is probably to Katherine Ann Porter, with whom Herbst was very close; that Eleanor Saltzman died in a sanitarium operated by her cousin.” The fascinating stories of these women go on and on. 

For Roethler, she wants people to know that this exhibit is just the tip of the iceberg. Narrowing down to just nine writers was a difficult task, having to exclude Susan Glaspell, Katinka Loesser, Actea Duncan, and so many more. 

“I want people to seek out these writers–to help them not slide into oblivion,” stated Roethler. “I think that’s one of the main jobs of any Special Collections.” 

Posted in Exhibitions, Staff NewsTagged exhibit, jacque roethler, retirement

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