Legendary broadcaster Charles Osgood spent World War II in Baltimore – Baltimore Sun

Charles Osgood, a rugged figure in a bow tie, was the hilarious host of CBS’ Sunday Morning from 1994 to 2016, with his calm voice, friendly personality and quirky poetry. He grew up in the Ashburton neighborhood of Baltimore during World War II.

Charles Osgood Wood III (his radio and television nickname was Charles Osgood) was the son of Charles O. Wood II, a textile salesman, and Mary Wilson “Violet” Wood. He was born in Manhattan and in 1939 settled in Edgewood Road.

“I was here all through grammar school. It was a pretty formative time,” he told the Baltimore Sun in 2004.

Growing up, Osgood was a solar courier. In promoting his memoir in 2004, he followed his old path as a reporter. Time hasn’t diminished his ability to throw papers from the sidewalk onto the porch with pinpoint accuracy.

He told reporters that was his first lesson in journalism: “The importance of accuracy.”

During his time in Baltimore, Osgood studied piano at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. And in 2004, he returned to Peabody to play piano with then-institute director Robert Sirota, who called him a “natural stride pianist.”

“I can always come back here and play,” Sirota said.

Osgood wrote a book called “Defending Baltimore from Enemy Attack,” describing the wartime and “uncontrollable glee” that Baltimore’s munitions factories and shipyards built the Liberty ships, planes, and other war necessities. are recorded.

A fan of the former International League team, the Orioles, he wrote about looking up his favorite player’s number in the phone book and giving him a ring.

But his professional persona in the pre-television era was honed by radio, movies, and the big band music of the day.

In 1946, Osgood and his family left Baltimore and moved to Philadelphia, where he struggled through his high school years. He eventually earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham University in New York City in 1954. Years later, he admitted that he spent more time at the college radio station than reading his books.

“I’ve never taken a journalism course,” Osgood told Broadcasting magazine in 1985. “Anything that was unique or different in my style would probably have been slammed on the first day in journalism school.”

He began his career in 1954 at Washington’s classical music station WGMS. From 1955 to his 1958 years, he served in the Army and served as a staff announcer for the United States Army Band at Fort Myer, Virginia.

After his discharge from the military, he returned to WGMS as program director, then the station’s owner, RKO General, sent him to WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was fired in 1963.

He worked as a newscaster for four years before joining CBS-AM in 1967, which at the time was transitioning to an all-news format.

He joined CBS News in 1971, anchoring the morning news program, and 10 years later was promoted to anchor of “CBS Sunday Night News,” and anchored “CBS Morning News” from 1987 to 1992. I did.

During his radio days, Osgood scoured the news for offbeat and quirky stories, which became the basis of his famous “Osgood Files.”

One day, he decided to post a rhyming poem he had written after a news article, but was immediately admonished by news administrators.

“‘Very nice, Charlie, very smart, please don’t do it again.’ But I did,” he told The New York Times in 1994.

He told People magazine that it wasn’t a poem, but a “rampant dog.”

Time magazine once described the situation as unstable between “Ogden Nash and Edgar Guest.”

“If you’re writing a four-minute poem and you have half an hour to write it, you’re accepting whatever the muse puts in your hands,” he told the old Sunday Sun magazine in 1974. Ta.

After the broadcast on the US economic downturn, Osgood said:

“There’s nothing quite like / A little crisis in the morning.”