James Charles Lehrer was born May 19, 1934, in Wichita, Kansas. A news anchor for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, he is an author of nonfiction and fiction novels, films, and plays. At Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas, he was one of the three sports editors at the Jefferson Declaration. Lehrer graduated from Victoria College and the University of Missouri. After serving 3 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, his journalism career began at the Dallas Morning News and then the Dallas Times-Herald. Lehrer covered the Kennedy assassination in 1963. He was also a political columnist at the Dallas Times-Herald and became the paper's city editor in 1968.

Lehrer's newspaper career led him to Dallas KERA-TV to work as executive director ...