Four Distinguished Communication Leaders to be Inducted into C&IS Hall of Fame at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Four distinguished communication leaders in fields ranging from broadcast news to public relations will be inducted into the College of Communication and Information Sciences (C&IS) Hall of Fame at The University of Alabama on Oct. 4.

Media will have an opportunity to meet with the four inductees during a press conference to be held on Thursday, Oct. 4, at 2:30 p.m., in the Logan Room of the Bryant Conference Center on the UA campus.

Established by the C&IS Board of Visitors, the Communication Hall of Fame was created in 1998 to honor, preserve and perpetuate the names and accomplishments of communication personalities who have brought lasting fame to the state of Alabama. This year marks the fourth class of inductees into the Hall of Fame. These honored individuals include:

Tom Cherones (1939 – )
Hollywood Director and Producer

John Cochran (1939 – )
ABC News Chief Correspondent

Betsy Plank (1924 – )
Public Relations Executive and First Female President of Public Relations Society of America

Kathryn Tucker Windham (1918 – )
Journalist and Now Alabama’s Favorite Storyteller

“These remarkable individuals have had a profound impact on the social, economic, political and cultural life of Alabama and the nation through the disciplines of communication,” said Dr. E. Culpepper Clark, C&IS dean. “These men and women represent the finest the state has to offer. Their commitment to their profession has raised the sights of us all in the communication and information disciplines.”

The Communication Hall of Fame Gallery is now located in the rotunda of Reese Phifer Hall on the UA campus. Permanent archives will be established and maintained for the collection of memorabilia related to the lives and careers of those chosen for placement in the Hall of Fame.

The College of Communication & Information Sciences is among the largest and most prestigious communication colleges in the country, having graduated more than 12,000 students and ranking among the top institutions in the country in the number of doctorates awarded. Communication graduates have earned four of the six Pulitzer Prizes awarded to UA alumni.

2001 College of Communication and Information Sciences Hall of Fame Inductees

TOM CHERONES (1939- )

The man who produced or directed the first 86 episodes of Seinfeld, the most successful situation comedy in the history of television, got his first broadcasting job at The University of Alabama. “I was working at the A&P in Tuscaloosa, but I was looking for something more interesting,” Tom Cherones remembers. “When I started at University TV, my pay fell from about 80 cents an hour to 40 cents an hour.”

Cherones grew up in downtown Tuscaloosa. His grandfather immigrated to the United States from Greece and opened the Tuscaloosa Café on Broad Street (now University Boulevard). His father was a maintenance engineer at WTBC and operated a radio and TV repair shop in Tuscaloosa.

His first jobs in television may have made him wistful for the glamour of the A&P. “We swept floors, we moved sets, we did everything,” Cherones recalls about working in the TV studios on the second floor the Old Union building – now Reese Phifer Hall. “I worked on Chemistry Can Be Fun with George Toffel, and eventually I was directing productions at the University.”

Cherones finished his undergraduate work at the University of New Mexico and after serving as producer and director in Pittsburgh at WQED, one of public television’s flagship stations, he returned to The University of Alabama where he earned a master’s degree in telecommunication and film in 1976. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy from 1961 to 1965 where, after duty at sea, he was, among other things, assigned to make motion pictures of explosions.

It was apparently the last time he shot a bomb.

In 1975 Cherones moved to Hollywood. His first job was production manager for General Hospital, and since 1975 he has been an independent producer and director for Warner Brothers, ABC-TV, CBS-TV, Paramount, Lorimar and Mary Tyler Moore Productions. He was also the production manager of Welcome Back Kotter. In 1980 he wrote and produced a movie, Two of Hearts, for cable and public television. He has directed and produced episodes of Caroline in the City, Boston Common, Ellen, Growing Pains, News Radio, and Ladies Man.

Cherones has a reputation for staying calm and running a congenial set in a high-pressure business where tempers flare. “When I produce a show, everyone has his job and everybody is important. If everybody does his job there is no problem.”

He has received the Director’s Guild of America Outstanding Comedy Director Award for Seinfeld, an Emmy award for Seinfeld, a Golden Globe award, a Monitor award, The Peabody award, the People’s Choice award, the TV Critics award and the Christopher award. He has also received six Emmy and three Directors Guild of America award nominations. In 1993 he was presented the UA College of Communication’s Outstanding Alumnus award.

Cherones even appeared “on camera” as a director in one episode of Seinfeld. The Tuscaloosa News asked him to critique Tom Cherones, the actor. “Mediocre,” he said. “I wouldn’t hire him again.”

JOHN COCHRAN (1939- )

John Cochran is a consummate broadcast news reporter who has earned a reputation for fairness, accuracy, and objectivity.

Now chief Washington correspondent for ABC NEWS, Cochran was born and raised in Montgomery, Ala. He got his first broadcasting job as a student at The University of Alabama when Bert Bank (2000 Hall of Fame inductee) hired him to announce records and read the news at WTBC radio in Tuscaloosa.

But all was not “rock and roll” during his time at the Capstone. Memorable was his insider’s view of President Frank Rose during the Schoolhouse Door crisis precipitated by then Gov. George Wallace. Also memorable was the camera shot that found Cochran peeking over President Rose’s shoulder in a group photograph that famously included “Bear” Bryant and President John F. Kennedy.

After military service and graduate study at the University of Iowa, Cochran worked as a television reporter and anchor at WSOC-TV in Charlotte and WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. In 1977 he joined NBC News, working first as its Pentagon correspondent and then as chief foreign correspondent from 1977-1987. He showed extraordinary courage in his reporting of stories such as the overthrow of the Shah in Iran and the Islamic Revolution. He pursued stories wherever they might be found, even to battlegrounds.

Cochran’s honest reporting angered officials in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, a journalistic diligence that occasionally led to detention and incarceration. He received Emmy awards for his coverage of the Solidarity movement in Poland and the overthrow of the Romanian government. He served as NBC’s chief diplomatic correspondent and chief White House correspondent before joining ABC NEWS as chief Capitol Hill correspondent in 1994. Today he is a frequent reporter and commentator for ABC World News Tonight and other ABC NEWS programs.

John Cochran received the UA College of Communication’s Outstanding Alumnus Award in 1977 and its Distinguished Achievement Award in 1989. He also serves on the Board of Visitors for the College of Communication and Information Sciences. In 1999 the University awarded him an honorary doctor of humane letters, where he also received a rare standing ovation for his commencement address. Perhaps his greatest achievement is that despite the revolutionary changes in broadcast news during his 24 years as a network reporter, he remains one of the nation’s most trusted correspondents.

“He’s been very good for a very long time,” says ABC’s Peter Jennings. “I know because I’ve been his competitor … and his editor.”

BETSY PLANK (1924- )

Betsy Plank might be called public relations’ First Lady.

She was the first woman elected president of the Public Relations Society of America, and the first person to receive PRSA’s two top professional honors: the Gold Anvil as the nation’s outstanding professional and the Lund Award for exemplary civic and community service. At Ameritech she was the first female to head a company department, directing external affairs.

Plank credits The University of Alabama for much of her success. She says the Capstone provided an outstanding foundation for her career even though there was no such thing as a public relations major when she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1944. “The University gave me those rich disciplines which have served so faithfully throughout a professional lifetime,” she said.

Plank served as executive vice president and treasurer of Edelman Public Relations, an international counseling firm, and later served as director of public relations planning for AT&T before joining Ameritech (formerly Illinois Bell).

She spent more than 17 years with Ameritech and it was here that she faced her greatest challenge – shaping and articulating that institution’s response to the divestiture of the Bell System. “We had a couple of years to break up the world’s largest corporation and prepare it without a single missed step,” she recalls. “There were many problems. It was fascinating to live through, challenging to prepare for and carry out, and almost 20 years later, the telecommunications industry hasn’t settled down yet.”

Plank is dedicated to civic causes in Chicago, such as the Girl Scouts and the United Way’s Crusade of Mercy. She serves on the advisory board of Illinois Issues and as a trustee of the Illinois Council of Economic Education.

Her dedication to public relations education is unexcelled. Northern Illinois University, Ball State University, the University of Texas, Kent State University, and the University of Florida all have

honored her for excellence in the field. She co-chaired the 1987 national commission to develop guidelines for the undergraduate public relations curriculum at colleges and universities and is a founding member of PRSA’s College of Fellows, an honorary group of national leaders in public relations.

In 2000 Plank received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arthur W. Page Society, a professional organization whose mission is to strengthen the policy-making role of the chief corporate public relations officer. Also that year she was presented The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences Distinguished Achievement award, which was renamed in perpetuity the Betsy Plank Distinguished Achievement Award.

“I think public relations is fundamental to a democratic society,” she says, explaining that the framers of the constitution were, in a sense, the nation’s first practitioners of public relations. “It’s necessary because people need to be informed, and they need to make intelligent choices. Public relations is the broker of that kind of information.”

KATHRYN TUCKER WINDHAM (1918- )

Alabamians consider her the state’s best storyteller. Public radio listeners consider her a best friend.

They have found in her a loving companion who shares intimate, evocative memories of swimming holes, penny candy, eccentric neighbors, and lazy days spent counting buzzards and stamping gray mules.

After graduating from Huntingdon College, Kathryn Tucker Windham became the first woman hired by the Alabama Journal in Montgomery. However, her journalism career began in her hometown of Thomasville where, as a teenager, she wrote movie reviews for her cousin Earl Tucker, the editor of the local newspaper. Though it was a small town, she lived a large life and shares its wonders through her richly textured stories and essays. And it was there, with a giveaway drugstore Brownie camera, that this accomplished photographer snapped her first pictures. Today her photos are exhibited in galleries and museums.

She served as reporter, photographer, and state editor for the Birmingham News and reporter, city editor, state editor, and associate editor for the Selma Times Journal. She promoted statewide war bond drives during WWII and was community service planner for the Area Agency on Aging in Camden, Ala.

She had never really told stories until a surprise invitation to speak at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tenn. Now she is a fixture at that event and appears at numerous other festivals in the United States and abroad. Her ghost stories, which she first collected in Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey, have been favorites for generations of schoolchildren. Her thoughtful and poignant stories about growing up and living in the South secured her an audience of all ages when she was featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and her commentaries are still heard every Friday morning on Alabama Public Radio.

In her many books she has remembered the fascinating yet largely forgotten lives of the people in isolated and insular Gee’s Bend, Ala. She has preserved treasured family recipes and documented rich, compelling stories, legends, and folkways from Alabama’s past. In a one-woman play, she rescued the legacy of Julia Tutwiler, one of Alabama’s greatest citizens and reformers.

Writing from her home in Selma, looking out upon her bottle trees, she has little interest in e-mail and cell phones, and won’t hear of plugging in an answering machine. Still, she accomplished something in her stories that cannot be duplicated by the most sophisticated machines. “I think storytelling is a way of saying ‘I love you,’” she explains. “I love you enough to tell you something that means a great deal to me.

Editor’s Note: Inductee biographies are attached. For e-mailed inductee photo sketches, contact Susanne Hibbard in University Relations at 205/348-5320.