Mike Wallace's legacy lives on at University of Michigan

By David N. Goodman Associated Press DETROIT (AP) -- Three-quarters of a century after Mike Wallace graduated from the University of Michigan, his name and his contributions live on at the Ann Arbor school, where he helped create a journalism fellowship and raise $1.3 billion. The veteran CBS newsman died Saturday in New Canaan, Conn., at age 93. "Society will remember Mike Wallace as a dedicated, hard-charging journalist," said university President Mary Sue Coleman. "At the University of Michigan, we know him as that and so much more. He was extremely generous with his time, his papers, his financial support and, most important, his belief in this university and its role in today's world." The Brookline, Mass., native reported for the student-run newspaper, The Michigan Daily, graduating from the Ann Arbor school in 1939. He went on to radio work at radio stations WOOD in Grand Rapids and WXYZ in Detroit, followed by a stint in the Navy before launching his national broadcast career. For decades, Wallace had fairly loose ties with his alma mater, but that began to change in 1980 when his interest in launching what became the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists brought him together with Michigan journalism faculty member Charles Eisendrath. Eisendrath, who now directs the Livingston program, asked for Wallace's help in endowing a fellowship program for mid-career journalists. It didn't hurt that Wallace knew virtually everyone, Eisendrath said. Wallace agreed. "He was phenomenal with that," Eisendrath said. Wallace also gave generously of his own funds for what became the Knight-Wallace Fellowship program, which gives participants opportunities to explore subjects of interest to them. Wallace went well beyond giving money and a marquee name to the program, Eisendrath said. "He would come to Ann Arbor once or twice a year," he said. "It was a very happy exchange." Deciding that the fellowship needed a homelike center where participants could gather, Eisendrath flew to New York and asked Wallace for help. "He said, 'Why don't we do it?'" Eisendrath said. Three months later, Wallace House was a reality. "He was just wonderfully fast when he knew what he wanted to do," Eisendrath said. Wallace showed his qualities as a friend in 2000, when Eisendrath, wife Julia Eisendrath, their two sons and daughter-in-law were on board a plane that crashed in Costa Rica, leaving his wife with a long and painful recovery. "Mike would call. He would make her feel beautiful," Charles Eisendrath said. Wallace signed on as co-chair of a Michigan fundraising campaign that eventually raised $1.3 billion for the university. "We could not have asked for a more enthusiastic and loyal alumnus, one whose words and actions changed both the University of Michigan and the world beyond," the university's president said Sunday. In 2006, Wallace gave papers from his 40-year career at CBS News to the school. The papers included notes, transcripts, photographs, correspondence, interviews and research and fill about 50 file cabinet drawers. "Researchers will find these papers an archival treasure trove," Francis X. Blouin, director of the university's Bentley Library, said at the time. "These papers reconstruct the thinking that lay behind groundbreaking television journalism. Wallace's well-crafted interviews explored the gamut of major issues of our time." The gift followed an earlier one to the university's Bentley Library that included Wallace's papers from the 1950s, when he wrote a newspaper column and hosted an interview program on ABC. Wallace said then that his decades with "60 Minutes" gave him "the chance to travel the globe, meet and report on world issues, and broadcast what I've learned to an audience at home that had long trusted CBS News reporters like Walter Cronkite and Eric Severeid." Wallace's "60 Minutes" interview with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, which included a video of the 1998 death by injection of Lou Gehrig's patient Thomas Youk, of Waterford Township, was the beginning of the end of Kevorkian's hands-on role in the assisted suicide movement. Oakland County prosecutors drew on Wallace's interview at the trial, which led to Kevorkian's conviction and imprisonment for second-degree murder. ---------------- Online: Knight-Wallace Fellowship: http://www.mjfellows.org. Published: Tue, Apr 10, 2012