(This interview was initially published on Cattlenetwork.com on March 24, 2006, and is an interesting look at the man who will be the keynote speaker at the Meat Industry Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony).

Sometimes, life is a circular thing. What goes around, comes around. You can’t really escape your roots. You never stray too far from…OK, I’ll stop with the hokie little homilies and get on with the story. Forty years ago, young William escaped a life in rural Kansas and moved to the big city in search of adventure. Like any well-trained Kansas hunter, he quickly found what he went looking for.

He became the voice of news in Chicago and spent most of the next four decades reporting on the major events of our time for the CBS Morning News and local CBS affiliate WBBM. Throughout most of the last quarter of the twentieth century, it didn’t really happen unless Bill Kurtis said so at 6:00 pm.