Who was William Grant?

While Clare and I were vis­it­ing with Bob Tabor last week, he hand­ed me a ragged old issue of Smoke Signals.  This was the stu­dent news­pa­per for Winchester High School, and his copy was dat­ed November 20, 1959.  Bob want­ed me to read the edi­to­r­i­al, “Education Begins a New Outlook,” which I quote from here:

“As the old say­ing used to go, ‘Thank God for Mississippi.’  This was the way Kentuckians use to express the idea that if it wasn’t for the state of Mississippi that Kentucky would be at the bot­tom of the heap in edu­ca­tion.  However, new devel­op­ments have altered the sit­u­a­tion so that Kentucky now occu­pies a very com­fort­able posi­tion in last place.  Unless some­thing is done, and done imme­di­ate­ly, Kentuckians can be assured of a long look up at the oth­er school sys­tems in the nation.”

The op-ed went on to argue for addi­tion­al tax dol­lars for schools.  “Now that it has been sug­gest­ed, it is the duty of every Kentuckian to see that they and the next leg­is­la­ture take mea­sures to do some­thing about Kentucky’s ter­ri­ble edu­ca­tion­al condition.”

When I told Bob I was not famil­iar with William Grant, the edi­tor, he said, “You should be.  There’s an amaz­ing sto­ry there.” 

He was right.

William Russell Grant (1943−2016) was born in Winchester, the son of Russell and Mary Grant.  William grew up at 137 Boone Avenue.  His father, an attor­ney, served as police judge and city pros­e­cu­tor.  In high school, Grant received a Sigma Delta Chi jour­nal­ism award for his coura­geous edi­to­ri­als in the school news­pa­per.  He attend­ed the University of Kentucky, where he served as edi­tor of the Kentucky Kernel.  Grant won a schol­ar­ship from the Hearst Foundation for his sto­ry about the famous 1964 civ­il rights march in Frankfort.  He received a B.A. degree in 1965 and was cho­sen as the Outstanding Graduate in Journalism.  He earned an M.A. in 1967, becom­ing the first per­son to receive a UK master’s degree in mass communication.

Grant began his career in print jour­nal­ism.  He worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Detroit Free Press and the San Francisco Chronicle.  His report­ing won many nation­al awards, includ­ing five from the National Council for the Advancement of Education Writing, two Charles Stewart Mott Education Writing Awards and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel.  He also received a pres­ti­gious Nieman Fellowship in jour­nal­ism at Harvard University for 1979–80.

In 1983, Grant made a major shift from news­pa­pers to pub­lic tele­vi­sion, going to work for WGBH in Boston.  He spent his first two years man­ag­ing “Frontline,” the week­ly doc­u­men­tary news show.  He then spent ten years in charge of “Nova,” the famed sci­ence program.

He joined WNET in New York City in 1997 as exec­u­tive direc­tor of sci­ence, nature his­to­ry pro­grams.  He pro­duced an aver­age of 40 doc­u­men­taries a year includ­ing the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed “Stephen Hawking’s Universe,” “The American President,” “Faces of America,” “African American Lives,” and many more.  During his 32 years in tele­vi­sion, Grant won thir­teen Emmys and eight Peabody Awards.

In 1991 Grant found­ed the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, con­sid­ered the Oscars of doc­u­men­tary con­ser­va­tion and nature films.  He was chair­man emer­i­tus of the fes­ti­val board at the time of his death.

Grant was described as a per­fec­tion­ist and a vora­cious read­er of history. 

“He was, bot­tom line, an absolute joy to work with,” accord­ing to col­leagues.  “His impact was indeli­ble, and his lead­er­ship was very much a reflec­tion of what he was as a human—insightful, wry, intel­li­gent, and always a true Southern gentleman.” 

Grant was induct­ed into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2001 and UK’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2005. 

And he was a Winchester man.