Robert Mott, an Emporia State University graduate who helped found National Public Radio, will speak Thursday on campus.
Mott’s presentation will run from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and cover a broad range of topics, including journalism, technology and communication. It will be held in room 204 of Cremer Hall, the Roecross conference room. There is no charge.
From the 1940s through the 1980s, Mott always involved himself with broadcasting in some way, whether by working in news radio, teaching journalism or working with the Public Service Satellite Consortium. A 1947 graduate of ESU (then Kansas State Teachers College), he worked on the ESU Bulletin and was news director of radio station KTSW while at the college.
“I’m looking forward to seeing somebody who’s done this for as long as he has — and how he has kept his sanity,” said Noah Sturdevant, a Bulletin editor who has helped prepare for the event.
Mott served in World War II as a paratrooper in the 82nd and 17th Airborne divisions and fought at the Battle of the Bulge. Before the war, he was a member of Company B, 137th Infantry, 35th Division of the Kansas National Guard, which was called to active duty a year before Pearl Harbor. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.
From 1948 through 1956, he worked in Colorado, including a four-year stint as an instructor in the radio-television department. The rest of the time was spent working for Colorado radio stations. In 1955, he covered both the story of President Dwight Eisenhower’s heart attack and the bombing of a United Airlines plane near Denver. The latter event led to the arrest, trial and conviction of John Gilbert Graham, whose trial would see the first radio and television broadcasts of testimony from a Colorado courtroom.
From 1956 to 1968, he taught journalism at Washington State University in Pullman. He also worked as a writer and news director for KWSU-AM, the nation’s third oldest educational radio station. When the university activated its public television station in 1962, Mott was manager-in-charge of its construction.
In August 1968 he became the executive director of National Educational Radio in Washington, D.C. There he helped to establish and develop National Public Radio in 1970. At NPR’s 30th anniversary in 2000, the organization recognized him as a founder in ceremonies at Washington D.C.
From 1970 to 1973, he was director of station relations for the Public Broadcasting Service. He then became involved with public service satellite broadcasting, eventually serving as executive vice president of the Public Service Satellite Consortium before retiring in 1984 and moving to San Diego.
He has been married 60 years to his wife Edith, also an Emporia graduate. They have one daughter and one granddaughter,
ESU named Mott a distinguished alumnus in 1978.