12/27/2022
HAPPY 77th BIRTHDAY to DIANE SAWYER!!
Career years: 1962 - present
Born Lila Diane Sawyer, American television broadcast journalist known for anchoring major programs on two networks including ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, 20/20, and Primetime newsmagazine while at ABC News. During her tenure at CBS News she hosted CBS Morning and was the first woman correspondent on 60 Minutes. Prior to her journalism career, she was a member of U.S. President Richard Nixon's White House staff and assisted in his post-presidency memoirs. Presently she works for ABC News producing documentaries and interview specials.
Early life -
Sawyer was born Dec 22, 1945 in Glasgow, Kentucky, to Jean W. (née Dunagan), an elementary school teacher, and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer, a county judge. Her ancestry includes English, Irish, Scots-Irish, and German. She has an older sister, Linda. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Louisville, where her father rose to local prominence as a Republican politician and community leader. He was Kentucky's Jefferson County Judge/Executive when he was killed in a car accident on Louisville's Interstate 64 in 1969. E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, in the Frey's Hill area of Louisville, is named in his honor.
Sawyer attended Seneca High School in the Buechel area of Louisville. She served as an editor-in-chief for her school yearbook, The Arrow, and participated in many artistic activities. She always felt, however, that she was in the shadow of her sister, Linda.[citation needed] Insecure and something of a loner as a teen, Diane found happiness, she later said, going off by herself or with a group of friends that called themselves "reincarnated transcendentalist" and read Emerson and Thoreau down by a creek. In her senior year of high school, in 1963, she won first place in the annual national America's Junior Miss scholarship pageant as a representative from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. She won by her strength of poise in the final interview and her essay comparing the music of the North and the South during the Civil War. From 1963 to 1965, Sawyer was America's Junior Miss, touring the country to promote the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair. At first, she thought that travelling around the country as America's Junior Miss would be a terrifying experience, but it taught her to think on her feet and do so with poise and grace. Sawyer attended Wellesley College, graduating in 1967.
Personal life -
Sawyer was in relationships with Frank Gannon, aide to President Richard Nixon, as well as American diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
On April 29, 1988, she married film and theatre director, producer, and actor Mike Nichols. Nichols had two daughters and a son from previous marriages. He died on November 19, 2014, at the age of 83.
The "List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" in Forbes magazine reported that, between June 2005 and June 2008, Sawyer made approximately $12 million, solely from entertainment income.
