DON HEWITT, SUCCUMBS TO MORTALITY!

As yet another television personality waves the world goodbye, Icheoku says, the season of death appears to here; and it is harvesting bountifully men of the fifth estate, - journalism?

Less than 24hours after Bob Novak gave up the ghost and one month after fellow CBS heavy-hitter, Walter Crankite expired, another heavy-weight television personality has died. Don Hewitt, the man who created CBS' 60 Minutes,' died of pancreatic cancer at his Bridgehampton home in New York on Wednesday, August 19, 2009. He was 86 years old!

Don Hewitt, in September 24, 1968, created the popular one-hour broadcast of mixed hard news and feature stories known as "60 Minutes" news-magazine and produced same for 36 years! He was also credited with producing the first televised United States of America presidential debate in 1960 between Democratic John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon . It is to his astuteness that "60 Minutes" won 73 Emmys, 13 DuPont/Columbia University Awards and nine Peabody Awards during his years chaperoning the news-magazine, which ended in 2004. '60 Minutes' also finished among Nielsen's top 10 for 23 straight years and was television's top-rated show four times, most recently in 1992-93.

Don Hewitt was the central character in the 1999 movie "The Insider," in which he was portrayed as a whip who caved to pressure from CBS lawyers and as a result failed to air a whistle-blowing story about the tobacco industry.

Among his many firsts:- Hewitt directed the first network television newscast on May 3, 1948; he originated the use of cue cards for news readers which today is done by electronic machines; he was the first to "superimpose" words on the TV screen for a news show. According to one commentator, Don was such a colossal television personality that "There isn't a news show on television that doesn't have Don Hewitt's DNA in it." Icheoku says, what a resounding tribute for a man who did television so much good! His last known production was the 2007 televised version of the "Radio City Christmas Spectacular," for NBC.

Don Hewitt is survived by his third wife of 30 years, Marilyn Berger; two sons from his first marriage and two daughters from his second marriage. Icheoku says, death please go away as you have already killed enough within this past period. To the Hewitt family, your man's life should be celebrated for what it meant and accomplished! To the departed, so long Mr. Sixty-Minutes!