PETTIT, William Thomas "Tom" 1931-1995
PETTIT
Posted By: K.L. Kittleson
Date: 11/9/2013 at 00:31:41
William Thomas "Tom" Pettit
GRADUATE OF UNI -- AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST
Birth: Apr. 23, 1931 - Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio.
Death: Dec. 22, 1995 - of Hamilton, Bermuda.
Tom Pettit died in December 22, 1995, at the age of 64 years, of complications following surgery for the repair of a ruptured aorta. At the time of his death he was living in Hamilton, Bermuda. Tom Pettit was buried at Saint Columba Catholic Cemetery, Middletown, Newport County, Rhode Island. His gravestone inscription says: "Journalist - Beloved husband of Patricia Barry Pettit"
William Thomas Pettit was born on April 23, 1931, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, and graduated from Waterloo West High School in 1949. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Iowa State Teachers College, later the University of Northern Iowa, in 1953, where he wrote for the student newspaper. He received a master's degree in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in 1958. He also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Northern Iowa in 1988.
He started his broadcasting career with WOI-TV in Ames, Iowa, in 1953. After two years there, he moved to KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and then to WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. Tom was hired in 1959 by WRCV-TV, the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, and in 1962, moved to the NBC Los Angeles bureau. In 1968 he became chief West Coast correspondent for the National Education Television's Public Broadcast Laboratory. But later in 1968 he rejoined NBC as a Los Angeles correspondent.
He served as an NBC correspondent at the Washington, D.C., bureau from 1975 through 1982. In March 1982, he became Executive Vice President of NBC News in New York. He served in that position until October 1985. He then served as Chief National Affairs correspondent from 1985 until 1989. From 1989 through the summer of 1992, he was an NBC correspondent based in London. He retired in 1995.
As a political journalist, Pettit interviewed every U.S. president, and covered the presidential campaigns and national political conventions of 1960, 1964, 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1988 and the 1992 general election.
Pettit won three Emmy awards, the Peabody Award, the American Medical Association's Medical Journalism Award, and the Polk Memorial Award during his professional career. He interviewed all United States Presidents from Harry Truman through Bill Clinton. He was well-known for his on-the-scene reporting of Lee Harvey Oswald's murder in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.
Tom Pettit and his first wife, Betty T. Pettit, from whom he was divorced in 1989, had four children: Debra, Anne, James, and Robert. Tom Pettit later married Patricia Barry Pettit.
After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Pettit was dispatched to Dallas where he served, in effect, as a police reporter. In the famous footage of Lee Harvey Oswald being killed by Jack Ruby in Dallas, Pettit, standing six feet away from the action, and as startled as his viewers, Pettit professionally announced to the world, "He's been shot. He's been shot. Lee Harvey Oswald has been shot."
Pettit was the only reporter broadcasting live from the Dallas, Texas, jail when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby. In 1988, on the 25th anniversary of the assassination, Mr. Petit recalled standing just six feet away and watching as Ruby opened fire. "It was the only time I've really experienced doing eyewitness reporting while you're live on the air," he said.
(Credits: Len Granger, Findagrave, Wikipedia)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Photo of Tom Pettit, below, is in the public domain, and was obtained from Wikipedia.com.
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