ABC News anchor Peter Jennings died 15 years ago Aug. 7 at his home in New York City. Earlier that year, Jennings announced he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He died weeks later at age 67.
Jennings was, in many respects, the last link to an era when broadcast news anchors were among the nation’s most venerable journalists, when the national news was broadcast each night over only three major networks — ABC, NBC and CBS — and anchors including Jennings, Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor and David Brinkley were invited into Americans’ homes each night.
“For four decades, Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways,” ABC News President David Westin wrote when Jennings died. “None of us will be the same without him.”
Jennings reported many of the pivotal events that continue shaping the world: in Berlin in the 1960s when the Berlin Wall was going up, and there in the ’90s when it came down; the civil rights movement during the 1960s; the struggle for equality in South Africa during the 1970s and ’80s.
He worked in every European nation that once was behind the Iron Curtain, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and throughout the Soviet Union. Jennings was one of the first reporters to go to Vietnam in the 1960s.
On Dec. 31, 1999, Jennings anchored ABC’s Peabody award-winning coverage of Millennium Eve, “ABC 2000.” More than 170 million Americans watched the telecast, making it the biggest live global television event ever.
Jennings also led ABC’s coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, anchoring more than 60 hours that week during the network’s longest continuous period of news coverage.
Jennings joined ABC News on Aug. 3, 1964.
