Charles Kuralt, 62, dies Wanderer of the back roads took America for an unhurried ramble.

Charles Kuralt, who died Friday at 62, spoke to America like a
friend, in a warm, familiar voice that accompanied us on a thousand
vicarious journeys over a million miles of highway.
And to the Americans who watched his dispatches from "On the
Road" and 15 years of "Sunday Morning," Kuralt was their friend, a
rumpled uncle who just happened to be an undisputed broadcasting
legend.
Kuralt's death at New York Hospital was attributed to
complications of lupus, an inflammatory disease that can affect the
skin, joints, the kidneys and the nervous system. Kuralt had been ill
several months, said his brother, Wallace.
"On the Road" first appeared as a weekly segment on the "CBS
Evening News" in 1967. It became a 13-year institution on the
network. Its success also made Kuralt a best-selling author (On the
Road with Charles Kuralt, Dateline America and other titles) and led
to an offer from CBS to devise a full-length news magazine in his own
image.
"Sunday Morning," a leisurely paced and highly literate
showcase for the fine arts, international features and slice-of-life
reports from throughout the country, was launched in 1979 and became
the highest-rated program on Sunday mornings. CBS also made Kuralt
the host, albeit too briefly, of the network's Monday-through-Friday
morning show in 1980.
As is true of many of TV's great originals, Kuralt's style was
widely admired but not widely copied. "Sunday Morning" has no
imitators, although its format has gone almost untouched over 18
years.
"He had just touched something that audiences responded to,"
said Charles Osgood, who replaced Kuralt as host in 1994. "If we
could think of something better to do, we'd do it. But nobody can."
At the time of his death, Kuralt was in semiretirement. He had
been appearing on the weekly CBS cable show "I Remember" and
narrating a syndicated series of 90-second features on Americana.
Kuralt's gift for crystallizing a moment in time with a few
graceful lines proved eminently portable, whether describing a
greased-pig contest, offering a closing comment on an election-night
broadcast or reporting documentaries.
In a CBS report 15 years ago, Kuralt came to Overland Park to
observe the effects of suburban malls on the American scene and the
communal psyche.
"Oak Park Mall, you might say, is a symbol of how far we have
come," he said in the documentary. "And this program is an attempt
to think about it before we have gone the full distance."
"He was the Norman Rockwell of reporters," said Wendall
Anschutz of KCTV, Channel 5. "I've heard him called corny, but I
don't think that's fair. He just said that we were always better
people than we gave ourselves credit for."
The winner of three Peabody awards and 12 Emmys, Kuralt in 1981
received the George Polk Memorial Award for national television
reporting. He was named broadcaster of the year in 1985 by the
International Radio-Television Society.
Kuralt was honored with the William Allen White Foundation Award
for Journalistic Merit by the University of Kansas in 1989. Calder
Pickett, retired KU professor, met him there and found him "one of
the warmest, nicest people" he had met.
He took his time
A North Carolina native, Kuralt edited the student newspaper at
the University of North Carolina, where he graduated in 1955. He won
the 1956 Ernie Pyle Memorial Award for his offbeat, human interest
columns in the Charlotte News and leaped to CBS the next year. By the
'60s he was a roving news correspondent for the network. He didn't
mind the travel, but he wanted out of hard news and into features.
"On the Road," launched as a three-month experiment, was that
ticket out. What made the show work was the paradox its host
embodied. Kuralt believed in the permanent things, even while
reporting for the temporal medium of television. A man on the go in a
medium made for the moment, he always brought a measure of
Tocqueville and Whitman to what he observed and how he reported it.
Part of his method was to avoid being in a hurry, as so many
Americans are. He once told The Kansas City Star about meeting two
families who, like him, were traveling through western Kansas. One
was so intent on making their daily mileage quota that "they weren't
learning anything along the way. " The other family was stranded when
their car broke down, but a nearby farm family took them in and
showed them the wonders.
"I believe that you could close your eyes and put a pin on a map
and, wherever it landed, you could have a good time," Kuralt said.
Advice from Truman
It is hard to miss the emotional effect of the death of this
chronicler of the American way on the Fourth of July. Kuralt's
identification with this country and its customs went deeper than a
five-minute TV report.
Speaking in Independence in 1988, where he was honored with the
Harry S. Truman Award for Public Service, Kuralt recalled winning an
American Legion essay contest at the age of 14 and going to
Washington to receive his award from then-President Truman.
"Study the country's history," Kuralt remembered Truman telling
him.
It would be Kuralt's ability to combine the instinct of the
sojourner with the discipline of the journalist - to get lost and
then find himself before deadline - that would define his career.
"I don't think journalism lasts very long, and television
especially is gone with the speed of light," he told a group of
students at Kansas State University in 1982. "People can't live all
the time at the speed of light."
For Kuralt, and the millions who hung on his measured words, the
speed of sound was fast enough.
In addition to his brother, Kuralt is survived by his wife,
Suzanna; two daughters, a sister and three grandsons.
Kuralt will be buried in a cemetery on the University of North
Carolina's campus in Chapel Hill, his brother said Friday night. A
memorial service was planned for next week.
The Associated Press contributed.
(CORRECTION: Because of a wire service error, an article Saturday about the death of CBS News correspondent Charles Kuralt said an essay contest he won as a teenager was sponsored by the American Legion. The contest was sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.)