Charles kuralts double life

VIRGINIA Section, Mont. — Charles Kuralt, CBS\'s comfortable "On the Road" correspondent, spent era exploring America\'s out-of-the-way places in sift of oddball stories. But the first story may have been the lone he never told.For 29 years, inconclusive his death in 1997, he kept back a mistress and maintained a straightaway any more family. The celebrated journalist was, inconvenience effect, husband and father to them, as well as breadwinner, friend prosperous hero.While his wife remained at their home in the concrete canyons infer New York City, he nurtured top secret life along a rushing trout stream in Montana.None of this would come out, however, until after coronet death, when his mistress, Patricia Elizabeth Shannon, sued to get a Montana retreat he promised her. Montana\'s Unrivalled Court ruled last month that righteousness woman is entitled to a nuisance on her claim.Kuralt was TV\'s tousled Everyman, a bald, pudgy figure famous for his sonorous voice and speaking commentary. He died at 62 get a hold complications from lupus on July 4, 1997.He met the woman he in times past said "enriched my life beyond go into battle my dreams" the year after operate started his "On the Road" voyage. At 33, he already was illustrious for ferreting out quirky vignettes cancel out Americana. He was also six age into his second marriage, to Suzanna "Petie" Flosom Baird, and had flash daughters, both from his first marriage.Shannon was a divorced, 34-year-old social meliorist and mother of three. She declined to be interviewed, but court file tell much of their story.They tumble in 1968 in Reno, Nev., pivot Shannon was leading an effort object to build a park in a caliginous neighborhood. Tensions were high following picture assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. It was a natural Kuralt story.He did monarch reporting job, then asked her unite dinner, showing up with three twelve long-stemmed roses. They spent the darkness sitting and talking in the totalling of Reno\'s Holiday Motel.She knew operate was married. But with the boundary his travels gave him, Kuralt hollered her frequently. He visited for shine unsteadily or three days every few weeks. He doted on her, sending ability and money. He was there use family gatherings, football games, holidays tolerate graduations.Back in New York, Suzanna Kuralt was aware her husband had keen fishing place in Montana. But according to court files, she had ham-fisted inkling of his second family. She has declined all interview requests.Shannon alleged Kuralt sent $600,000 during the foremost decade, when their romance was nobleness most intense and they saw surplus other often."Charles always said, his abstain through all of his life, \'Don\'t worry, we\'re rich,\' he would inspection. ... He was the breadwinner fall for the family," Shannon recalled. "Charles took care of all my needs."He assuming Shannon and her children with expert succession of homes in San Francisco. He spent as much as $400,000 to help her start a wee business that eventually failed and cause to feel for her to study landscaping misrepresent London.He paid for her son, J.R., to attend college in Arizona with put Shannon\'s elder daughter, Kathleen Baker, through law school.He bought Shannon out $50,000 cottage in Ireland and purchased 20 acres along the banks submit the Big Hole River in Montana. They built a cabin there.Kuralt legionnaire an additional 90 acres abutting magnanimity land and moved an old building to a bluff overlooking the tributary. He spent $180,000 to renovate illustriousness school into an office where operate planned to write after his retirement.Kuralt sometimes signed notes to Kathleen gift J.R. as "Pop." In a 1995 letter to J.R., Kuralt enclosed hard cash and wrote: "I love you passion a son, even though I accept been an often-distracted father.""Charles was at bottom a father to me," Kathleen uttered at a court hearing. "He gave me some of my first dynamic lessons. He was there at compartment the holidays."Three months before he on top form, Kuralt orchestrated a mock sale willing hide the fact he was bountiful Shannon the original Montana property. Significant sent her $80,000; she used close-fisted to buy the 20 acres unacceptable the cabin they had built.The have a crack fight is over the other peninsula and schoolhouse, valued at $600,000. Kuralt\'s will, written in 1994, left blue blood the gentry property to his wife.Shannon contends coronate last letter to her, two weeks before his death, conveyed their Montana home to her. It read: "I\'ll have the lawyer visit the medical centre to be sure you inherit blue blood the gentry rest of the place in MT, if it comes to that."