Richard Threlkeld

Class of 1959: News correspondent, anchor

After being editor of the Crimson yearbook at Ripon College, Richard Davis Threlkeld became a world-renowned news correspondent, anchor and bureau chief with tenures at both CBS and ABC News.

Threlkeld covered Vietnam and Moscow, the Persian Gulf War, the Patty Hearst kidnapping and trial, the Angela Davis trial, the Stanford University heart transplant on Mike Kasperak and the assassination and funeral of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

He was co-anchor with Lesley Stahl 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.” He was a national correspondent for ABC’s “World News Tonight” from 1981 to 1989, before he returned to CBS News.

He was born Nov. 30, 1937, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and grew up in Barrington, Illinois. He chose to come to Ripon partly because his grandmother had attended Ripon College, and his great-grandfather, Benjamin Single, had been mayor of Ripon in the early 1900s.

Threlkeld studied political science and history; participated in Crimson, College Days and Lambda Delta Alpha/Delta Upsilon; and was initiated into Phi Beta Kappa, He credited Ripon’s liberal arts education with helping him become a “generalist” in journalism, rather than a specialist. “You have to have a framework of things before you can report,” Threlkeld said. “It’s so nice to have been to a college like Ripon where you have the opportunity to get a background in history, political science, economics and other areas.

“Ripon was a remarkable learning and preparatory experience. I came here because I wanted to go to a small school. … I knew I was going to be a journalist, and I wanted to learn about as many different kinds of things and as many different areas of education as I could — economics, political science, history.”

He also said, “I didn’t go to college because that is what you did. I didn’t go because I just wanted to get out, get a job and live. You are getting something more important: It’s preparing you to be a better person, a complete citizen, a complete wife and mother or husband and father. You are learning about what great thinkers had to say about life – and all along, you thought you were getting a degree because you were going to get a job.”

His 2001 book, “Dispatches from the Former Evil Empire,” features his observations of the scene inside Russia and many of its old Soviet allies under the waning years of Boris Yeltsin’s regime. The preface is by Betsy Aaron, a CNN reporter and Threlkeld’s wife.

Journalistic honors awarded to Threlkeld include an Emmy Award for his work with CBS, an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting on Lebanon and Grenada, an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award for “Status Reports” on ABC’s World News Tonight” and the New York State Bar Association Award for his “Crime in America” series.

Ripon College presented him with a Distinguished Alumni Citation in 1974 and an honorary degree in 1989. He also served on the Board of Trustees and played a major role in developing Ripon’s first conference on ethics and public policy in 1989.

“It goes without saying that I owe Ripon College more than I can possibly describe,” Threlkeld said. “The history, philosophy, political science and liberal arts I was taught at Ripon has helped prepare me in a large way for the job I do today, which is to try to explain to the American TV viewers the tangled ways of the world. My Ripon education also helped prepare me as a human being for understanding the world around me and for ordering my own life. I don’t owe everything to Ripon, but owe it a great deal. It’s a very special place and it occupies a very special place in the world of American colleges and universities.”

He died after an automobile accident Jan. 13, 2012.