Brinkley, David

1920 – He was born on the 10th day of July this year in Wilmington, North Carolina.

1930's - he began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School.

1938-1941 - He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University, before entering service in the United States Army.

1943 - Following his discharge, he moved to Washington, D.C., looking for a radio job at CBS News. Instead, he took a job at NBC News and became its first White House correspondent.

1951-56 - Camel News Caravan (correspondent)

1956 – From this year through 1970 he co-anchored NBC's top rated nightly news program, The Huntley–Brinkley Report with Chet Huntley.

1970 - The broadcast was renamed NBC Nightly News, with Brinkley, John Chancellor, and Frank McGee coanchoring.

1971-1976 – He became the program's commentator.

1976 to 1979 - NBC decided to return to doing dual-anchor format, and Brinkley once again anchored the Washington desk for the network.

1981 - an unhappy Brinkley left NBC.

1981-1996 - Almost immediately after leaving NBC, Brinkley was offered a job at ABC, where he began hosting a Sunday-morning talk show, This Week with David Brinkley, which featured several correspondents and interviews with a guest newsmaker, followed by an opinionated roundtable of discussion. The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated.

1992 - During his career, he won ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards. In this year, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Brinkley was the father of the noted historian and Columbia University Provost, Alan Brinkley.

1992 - In an interview, he said "Most of my life, I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it".

1995 - The full title of Brinkley's 1995 autobiography sums up what he had seen during his legendary broadcasting career: David Brinkley: almost a dozen U.S. Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political Conventions, 1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks of News and Other Stuff on Television and 18 Years of Growing Up in North Carolina.

1996 – He stepped down from This Week on the 10th day of November of this year. He had been an electronic journalist for over fifty years and had been anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program for just over forty years, longer than anyone else had. His career lasted from the beginning of broadcast news to the information age.

2003 - Brinkley died at the age of 82 at his home in Houston, Texas, from complications after a fall.

As a news analyst, Brinkley was noted for his clipped speech, terse and biting commentary, candor, and dry wit.

• "A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her."