Trial begins in dispute over Charles Kuralt’s secret life

Bob Anez

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2000 | 12:04 p.m.

VIRGINIA CITY, Mont. - The secret life of the late CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt began unfolding in court Thursday as his mistress of 29 years sought to inherit the Montana fishing retreat they shared.

The pudgy "On the Road" reporter died in 1997 at age 62, and the fight over the property was originally between Kuralt's widow, Suzanne "Petie" Baird Kuralt, and his mistress, Patricia Shannon.

But after Mrs. Kuralt died in October, Kuralt's two daughters from a previous marriage took up the legal battle.

On Thursday, Shannon testified that Kuralt, the traveling correspondent known for his folksy reports about quirky Americana, played the role of husband and father for his secret family while his wife lived in New York.

Shannon described how Kuralt paid for college for her children, provided her with money to live and start a business and gave her property in Ireland and Montana. She said her son sometimes traveled with Kuralt while he was on assignment with CBS and went with him to political conventions.

"I considered, and I think he considered, and I know the children considered, that we were a family," she testified.

Shannon contends Kuralt intended that she have the fishing retreat, which consists of 90 acres and a renovated schoolhouse valued at more than $600,000.

Her claim is based on a letter Kuralt wrote to her two weeks before he died of lupus: "I'll have the lawyer visit the hospital to be sure you inherit the rest of the place in MT, if it comes to that."

"I always thought of it as ours," Shannon said of the retreat. "Charles always thought of it as ours."

Todd Hillier, an attorney for the estate, argued that Kuralt knew how to write a valid handwritten will and that if he had wished to make the letter binding, he could have done so.

The daughters, Susan Bowers and Lisa Bowers White, did not attend Thursday's court session. The non-jury trial is expected to last no more than two days.

Kuralt met Shannon in 1968, the year after he started his "On the Road" travels. He was six years into his second marriage, to Baird. Shannon was a divorced, 34-year-old social activist and mother of three.

For years, she testified, he called almost every night. They often spent time at a fishing cabin along the Big Hole River, one of America's finest trout streams.

In 1997, Kuralt gave Shannon the cabin and 20 acres, and she continues to live there. But in his will, he gave the adjacent 90-acre retreat to his wife and children.

While on the stand, Shannon read a poem Kuralt had written for her one Christmas. Titled "What I Will Give You (A Christmas IOU)," it promised: "A string of pearls, a suit and sweater, a Rubens print, a holly tree, and me. A mixing bowl, a sofa and chair, a set of china, a butcher's knife. My life."

Her voice, calm to that point, broke as she read.