"On this, my last word here on ABC, I quote Shakespeare, who said `All's well that ends well.' My time here now ends extremely well. Thank you."
David Brinkley thus ended his final commentary on ABC's "This Week" and a 54-year broadcasting career that kept him at the pinnacle of television journalism for three decades.Brinkley, 77, announced his retirement on Thursday, less than a year after he stepped down as host of the Sunday morning news show. He has continued since November his weekly commentaries on the show that began in 1981 as "This Week With David Brinkley."
Brinkley launched his broadcasting career at 23, covering President Franklin Roosevelt. As half of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley news anchor team in the 1960s, Brinkley's short, clipped sentences and dry wit were much imitated.
"Years ago young newspaper and radio reporters like me looked at the first flickering bluish pictures of the brand new tiny television screens . . . and wondered if we would ever learn to work with them," Brinkley said in his final commentary.
People who were "accustomed to hearing each other" could now see each other and see bowl games, movies, pictures of the moon, conventions and news from abroad, including "Winston Churchill's funeral and Princess Diana's, commonplace now," Brinkley said.
Brinkley reflected on his career, "with ABC News paying me to do what I would like to do anyway and asking only that I do it well and do it honestly."
Current "This Week" hosts Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson paid tribute to the veteran, referring to his statement about doing it well and honestly.
"Can you think of anybody for whom that was more true," Roberts said in the closing moments of the show.
"No," Donaldson said. "David Brinkley broke the mold, set the standard."