by RYP » Sun Aug 22, 2004 5:39 pm
Birthday: December 22, 1945
Birthplace: Louisville, Kentucky
Occupation: Journalist
Sign: Capricorn
Voted: "Most Likely to Succeed," in high school
Crowned: Junior Miss in 1963
Lifetime achievement: Sawyer was the first female reporter on "60 Minutes."
Awards: Emmy
She helped former president Nixon write his memoirs.
Sawyer held various positions in Nixon’s administration.
She was the first female correspondent on "60 Minutes."
She is married to director Mike Nichols.
She supports Friends in Deed, a charity founded by her husband and dedicated to providing aid to those with "life-changing illnesses," from AIDS to cancer.
Diane Sawyer: First Lady of News
Midwesterner Diane Sawyer was the first woman to break into the hallowed halls of "60 Minutes," in 1984. Today, Sawyer rules the roost at ABC, where she co-anchors both a morning and an evening news show.
You might call Sawyer the quintessential overachiever. As a kid, she was "basically a nerd," in her own words. Her father and mother, a Republican judge and a schoolteacher respectively, had high expectations for Sawyer and her sister, Linda. The girls rose to the occasion, taking elocution, fencing and singing lessons. Sawyer was a straight-A student, the editor-in-chief of her school paper and an intellectual who devoured the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Despite her beanpole looks, Sawyer also managed to snag the crown in the national Junior Miss pageant in 1963.
After graduating from Wellesley College (her older sister's alma mater) in 1967, Sawyer got her first TV gig as a weather girl. Highly ambitious, she stayed after-hours to learn how to operate camera and editing equipment. The head of the TV station noticed the determined novice, and within two years, she was promoted to full-time news reporter.
When Sawyer's father died in a car accident in 1971, she quit her job and took a road trip with her grieving mother. Upon her return, she set her sights on President Richard Nixon's White House and accepted a job as a press assistant. The president was impressed with what he saw; when the Watergate scandal broke, Sawyer was one of a small group of faithfuls allowed to accompany him into exile in San Clemente, California. She remained a Nixon supporter for four years, during which she helped him compile his memoirs. Unfortunately, the association with the former president nearly ruined her burgeoning career.