Most folks probably remember John Palmer as news anchor for the Today Show on NBC. He was part of the popular morning program for seven years. As a White House correspondent, he covered presidents Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Carter. He also covered big stories like the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and in 1980 he reported the aborted rescue of the American hostages in Iran. Palmer was also there to share the news of the Space Shuttle tragedy in 1986.
Palmer began his career in Atlanta at WSB-TV in 1960 and joined NBC News in 1962. Today, he's semi-retired. Actually the native of East Tennessee was vactioning and relaxing and writing and fishing, but came out of retirement to help jumpstart a new cable television network called Retirement Living Television.
Over the last two days, Palmer was in the Myrtle Beach area producing a new episode of his show Encore, which can be seen every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on DirecTV Channel 364.
Palmer and Retirement Living Television called on the services of Carolina Film Group to help produce the program. I've been friends with the guys at Carolina Film for years, so they asked me if I'd like to help them out.
As you know, I have a lot of free time on my hands these days, so I got to help out. (I may have had the easiest job there, but I won't get into that.) Those of us involved in the project got to spend about an hour and a half with Palmer on Thursday and about five hours with him today.
Before we started taping today, he shared many a story with the audience at The Grand Strand Senior Center. He talked of vacationing in Myrtle Beach as a boy and fishing in front of the Ocean Forest Hotel.
During lunch, he shared a few war stories with me and others while he thumbed through the latest copy of US News and World Report. It was really a lot of fun.
The coolest thing about the whole experience was that Palmer was so laid back and down-to earth. He's a real classy guy. In fact, he's the same ol' nice guy that many of us have enjoyed for over 40 years on television. He's worthy of being called a broadcast legend.
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