Mike Wallace and son Chris will anchor benefit dinner

The two broadcast journalists are appearing to help raise money for the Morton Plant Mease Foundation.

By CHRISTINA K. COSDON

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 14, 2000

PALM HARBOR -- Mike Wallace, famed reporter of CBS' 60 Minutes, and his son Chris Wallace, chief correspondent for 20/20, will be the featured speakers May 19 at an annual fundraiser sponsored by the Morton Plant Mease Foundation.

The 10th annual event will be at the Westin Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor. Proceeds will be used for renovation and expansion of the emergency rooms of Morton Plant Hospital and the two Mease hospitals.

Past benefits have featured former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher; broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite; former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara; and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell. The programs have raised more than $340,000.

Mike Wallace, who will celebrate his 82nd birthday May 9, has been co-editor of 60 Minutes since it made its debut in 1968. His news experience dates to the 1940s, when he was a radio broadcaster and writer for the Chicago Sun. He joined CBS in 1951, left in 1955 and returned in 1963 to become a CBS News correspondent. He covered the Vietnam War for CBS between 1967 and 1971.

In 1996, he won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award grand prize and television first prize for a CBS Reports broadcast he co-anchored in January 1995 on violence in America called In the Killing Fields of America.

Chris Wallace, a frequent substitute host for Nightline, joined ABC News from NBC News, where he had been chief White House correspondent since 1982 and anchor of Meet the Press. He joined NBC in 1975 as a reporter with WNBC-TV in New York City. In 1980, he won an Emmy for the NBC News documentary, The Migrant.

He has intervied President Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, movie stars Morgan Freeman and Jodie Foster, golf legend Arnold Palmer and Michael Jordan.

Tickets are $125 each. The evening, which begins with a reception at 7 p.m., includes dinner and a question-and-answer session. Reservation deadline is March 20. For information, call Nancy Phillips, the foundation's director of special events, at (727) 725-6368.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.