Egbert Roscoe Murrow in the Southern Quote

Egbert was born April 25, 1908 to Quaker parents in Guilford County, North Carolina. The family home was a log cabin without electricity or plumbing.  When he was six years old his family moved across the country to western Washington state 30 miles south of the Canadian border. Young Egbert was an excellent student. After high school he enrolled in Washington State, where he majored in speech.  He became active in student politics and after earning his degree he moved back east to New York. He married Janet Brewster in 1935 and their son was born in west London in 1945.

Egbert Roscoe Murrow, who started going by the nickname of Ed during college, joined CBS as director of talks and education in 1935. Although he went to London in 1937 to serve as the director of their European operations, he remained with the network for his entire career.

Murrow was working in London when World War II broke out in 1939. He provided live radio broadcasts during the height of the Blitz. It was during this time he became famous for two phrases. The first was his signature opening, “This is London,” with the emphasis on “This.” The second came at the end of 1940 at a time during the German bombing raids when Londoners never knew when they went to sleep at night if they would see each other the next day. Murrow closed each broadcast with, “Good night and good luck.”

In December 1945 Murrow reluctantly accepted an offer to become a vice president of CBS and head of CBS News. He made his last news report from London in March 1946.

In today’s Southern Quote we pay tribute to one of journalism’s greatest figures, a man who was noted for his honesty and integrity in delivering the news. Murrow once discussed his vocation by saying, “A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There’s nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I’ve done is agitated the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom—it’s gone.”