Bill Lawrence (news personality)

Bill Lawrence
Howard K. Smith and Bill Lawrence (right) during ABC's coverage of the 1968 presidential election
Born	William H. Lawrence (1916-01-29)January 29, 1916 Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.
Died	March 2, 1972(1972-03-02) (aged 56) Bedford, New Hampshire, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Newspaper reporter and television news personality
Years active	1932–1972
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Currie Constance MacGregor
Children	William Lawrence Ann Lawrence

William H. "Bill" Lawrence (January 29, 1916 — March 2, 1972) was an American journalist and television news personality whose 40-year career as a reporter began in 1932 and included a 20-year stint (1941–61) with The New York Times, for which he reported from major fronts of World War II, Korean War and, subsequently, as the newspaper's White House correspondent. In 1961 he joined ABC News where, for nearly 11 years, he served as the network's political affairs editor and, during his first year, as an evening news anchorman. The recipient of a 1965 Peabody Award, he was posthumously honored with the Trustees Award at the 1972 Emmy Awards.

A native Nebraskan, Lawrence was born in the state capital, Lincoln, and briefly attended the city's University of Nebraska before joining the hometown newspaper, Lincoln Star as a 17-year-old cub reporter. In 1935, at the age of 19, he moved to the Associated Press and, two years later, to the United Press. The first major assignment he covered for UP was the 1936–37 Flint Sit-Down Strike against General Motors and, having won plaudits for his reporting, was reassigned to Washington where, at the beginning of 1941, Arthur Krock, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, was impressed by his assertiveness in ferreting out news and offered him a position as one of the bureau's reporters.

In his twenty years with The Times, the 1940s byline, "By William H. Lawrence" and, in the 1950s and 1960–61, "By W. H. Lawrence" appeared over coverage from World War II, the Korean War and the Cold War. His battlefront reporting took him to Okinawa, Guam, Japan and Moscow, where he was assigned as a war correspondent in 1943 and, during the immediate postwar period, continued to file stories from such diverse locations as Poland, the Balkans and South America. Between 1950 and 1953, he spent months in Korea covering the war and interviewing soldiers in a series of personal human interest articles which appeared in The Times.