Robert Goralski

Robert Stanley Goralski was a news correspondent for NBC News for fifteen years in the 1960s and 1970s during a thirty-five year career in communications. Of Polish descent, he was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 2, 1928. He served in the United States Navy during World War II in Pacific shipboard service as a Quartermaster. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1949 with a Bachelor of Sciences in Journalism and Political Science. From 1947 to 1951 he was a full-time news broadcaster at WDWS, Champaign, Illinois, in his student years, becoming news director after graduation. He married the former Margaret Walton in 1948. As a Naval Reservist, he was recalled to duty during the Korean War, serving as a combat correspondent. After leaving the naval service, he continued his journalism career.

From 1952 to 1956 Goralski worked with Radio Free Asia at Tokyo, Japan, and Karachi and Dacca, Pakistan. He produced, wrote and narrated series "The Voice of Asia." From 1956 to 1961, Goralski moved to the Voice of America, in Washington, D.C., where he supervised broadcasts as English editor for Asia and Chief of the Burmese Service. He also oversaw production and programming , broadcast and wrote commentaries and feature programs for other services. He also had temporary assignments abroad, primarily in Asia.

From 1961 to 1975, Goralski was a television and radio correspondent with NBC News. He served for extended periods as White House, State Department, Pentagon and Energy correspondents. As NBC's reporter on the White House beat, Goralski anchored the live feed of Andrews AFB, Maryland when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was slain in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, covering the return of Air Force One to Washington, President Lyndon Baines Johnson's address to the nation, and the off-loading of the late president's casket.

In the mid-1960s, Goralski shifted to covering the Pentagon, and spent two years total in Southeast Asia, covering the war in Vietnam. In the mid-1970s he was back in Washington, D.C., and covered the Watergate hearings for NBC. In one notable instance, the hearings broke for a fifteen minute pause that actually lasted over an hour. Goralski, live on national feed, had to essentially retell the entire history of the political break-in at the Watergate complex that led up to the hearings in order to fill up the air during the unexpectedly long recess. Goralski also covered the My Lai massacres trial of Lt. William Calley. He also reported stories breaking from the Middle East, Laos, the Dominican Republic and sites of international conferences.

From 1975 to 1983, Goralski left broadcasting and accepted a position as Director of Information for Gulf Oil Corporation. There he developed and directed corporate communications at the national and local level and served as a spokesman on public affairs issues. From 1983 until his death in 1988, he was a self-employed author, lecturer and consultant. In 1981, Goralski published the "World War II Almanac, 1931-1945", (G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, ISBN 399-12548-5) which went through several printings. Other publications include "Press Follies", a collection of journalistic goofs and gaffes, published by I.I.S. Books in 1983, and "Oil and War" with Russell Freiburg (William Morrow & Company) in 1987. Goralski also wrote the introduction to "The CBS Benjamin Report", published by the Media Institute in 1984, contributed a portion of "The Best of Emphasis" (Newman Press) in 1968, and the annual section on Vietnam for Yearbooks of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1966-1975 editions. He died of cancer in McLean, Virginia in 1988. He is interred in Arlington National Cemetary. Goralski was recognized by the Columbia School of Journalism and the American Television Academy for his news reporting.

Goralski had three children, Douglas, Dorothy, and Kate. He is survived by his wife, Margaret, who serves on the Board of Directors at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in Langley, Virginia.

Sources

• Goralski, Robert, "World War II Almanac, 1931-1945, A Political and Military Record", G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1981, ISBN 399-12548-5
• Goralski, Robert, Resume, NBC biographical materials, courtesy of his wife, Margaret.

• Note on Sources - Bernard F. Dick, professor of English and comparative literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University, states on page 277 in the Notes section of his 1985 volume "The Star-Spangled Screen - The American World War II Film" (The University Press of Kentucky, ISBN 0-8131-1531-0) that of the available histories of World War II, "the best overall chronology is Robert Goralski's 'World War II Almanac 1931-1945: A Political and Military Record' (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981). Daily summaries in sentence form are interspersed with short paragraphs on war-related topics (Soviet women in combat, the internment of Japanese-Americans), maps, photographs, and lists of statistics."