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56th Anniversary Program: Living History with Bill Mercer
November 22, 2019 | 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
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An award-winning broadcast journalist, Bill Mercer is a Dallas Press Club Living Legend and a member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. As a broadcaster with CBS affiliate KRLD Radio and Television in Dallas in 1963, Mercer covered the breaking news of the Kennedy assassination, reporting live from Dallas police headquarters. At a midnight press briefing on November 22, 1963, Mercer was the one to initially inform suspect Lee Harvey Oswald that he had been formally charged with the murder of President Kennedy.
Mercer is co-author of the memoir When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963. As part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Mercer taught a semester-long course on the Kennedy assassination at Duke University.
Well-known as a sportscaster and play-by-play announcer, Mercer was the voice of the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, the University of North Texas, Southwest Conference and Chicago White Sox. An internationally popular wrestling announcer, Mercer spent more than 35 years as a broadcast journalism professor at the University of North Texas.