International reporter maintained ties to Barrington
Richard Threlkeld, who traveled the world over the course of a distinguished career as a correspondent for CBS and ABC News, died Friday in a car accident on New York's Long Island.
Threlkeld, 74, covered the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the Patty Hearst kidnapping and trial, and the execution of Gary Gilmore. He was also one of the last journalists evacuated from Phnom Penh and Saigon when those cities fell to the Communists in 1975.
But he got his start in Barrington, where former classmates remember him as an excellent student.
“When we all wrote papers, his was always the one read before the class because he was so outstanding,” said Mary Williams, who graduated with Threlkeld from Hough Street School in 1951 and Barrington High School in 1955.
Their class was the first freshman class of the new high school, and they've been “religious” about having reunions every five years, said Williams, who lives in Lake Barrington and serves on the school's alumni association board.
“He was one of the distinguished graduates from Barrington High School. We all loved watching him on the news,” Williams said. “He's been a very loyal alum. He came to almost all of the reunions.”
Indeed, Williams says she recently wrote Threlkeld a letter thanking him for his donation to the alumni association.
Another Barrington classmate, Paul Younger, recalls starting a firewood business with Threlkeld and two other friends.
“The four of us would get together and create a little business where we'd cut and chop up wood. And on a great big rotary saw that was extraordinarily dangerous and we had no business being near, we would saw up the logs and sell firewood around town,” said Younger, who now lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Younger also was on a square dance team with Threlkeld that was organized by a teacher at Barrington High. They even traveled to a few national competitions, he said.
Threlkeld and Younger were also on the football team, but “I think both of us spent a lot of time on the bench,” Younger said.
Younger later rekindled his friendship with Threlkeld after seeing him at a high school reunion. The two old friends and their spouses would get together at the Threlkelds' home on Long Island.
Threlkeld's wife, Betsy Aaron, was a CBS and CNN correspondent.
“Both had interesting stories from around the world,” Younger said. “They knew a lot of very famous international political people.”
CBS News correspondent Bob Simon was with Threlkeld when Saigon fell.
“Richard was old school in the best sense,” Simon said. “He really didn't give a damn about being on camera. He didn't do many stand-ups. He always figured there was more interesting footage than himself.”
Threlkeld joined CBS News in 1966 as a producer-editor based in New York, and later became a reporter, anchor and bureau chief. He covered the presidential campaigns of candidates ranging from Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s to Bill Clinton in the 1990s. He worked alongside Lesley Stahl as co-anchor of “The CBS Morning News” from 1977-79, and reported for “CBS Sunday Morning” from its inception in 1979, as well as for “The CBS Evening News With Dan Rather.”
In 1981, he decided to jump to up-and-coming ABC News without fanfare and without telling CBS.
“I don't like to horse trade. I'm not a horse,” Threlkeld told The Associated Press at the time. “After I decided ABC was the best place for me to go, it would have been wrong to make a verbal agreement and take it back to CBS to see what they could do.”
He described CBS as “the Rolls-Royce of TV news — traditional, utterly dependable and very predictable,” while ABC “is like a Ferrari — real fast, not always predictable, but a lot of fun.
“At this stage of my life,” said Threlkeld, then 43, “I'm in a Ferrari mood.”
At ABC News, he reported for “World News Tonight” in a role he tailored for himself as a sort of roving news analyst.
On Friday, ABC News president Ben Sherwood called Threlkeld a “terrific writer and master storyteller ... always full of ideas.”
Threlkeld returned to CBS News in 1989. His final assignment at CBS was as Moscow correspondent. From that experience, he wrote a book, “Dispatches from the Former Evil Empire,” which was published in 2001.
His last appearance on CBS was in 2004 on “Sunday Morning,” when he came out of retirement to help celebrate the broadcast's 25th anniversary by doing a feature story.
During his career, he won several Emmy and Overseas Press Club awards and an Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Award.
Threlkeld was born on Nov. 30, 1937, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He graduated from Ripon College in Wisconsin and earned a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Threlkeld's car collided with a propane tanker in Amagansett, N.Y., and he was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Police said they were investigating the accident.
Threlkeld is survived by his wife of 28 years, a brother, Robert, of Port Townsend, Wash.; two children, Susan Paulukonis, of Alameda, Calif., and Julia Threlkeld of Yonkers, N.Y.; and two grandchildren.
Contributing: Associated Press