Founders Day: An Evening with Brian Williams

The Indiana Historical Society will host Emmy Award-winning journalist Brian Williams for “Founders Day: An Evening with Brian Williams.”

The special event takes place Tuesday, October 24 from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center.

The evening’s schedule is:

• 7 p.m.: Doors open
• 7:30 p.m.: Program in Frank and Katrina Basile Theater
• 9 p.m.: Dessert Reception in Eli Lilly Hall

Program and Dessert Reception tickets are $150 per person. Program-only tickets are $75 per person. All proceeds benefit the education programs and services of the Indiana Historical Society.

For more information, contact Kimberly Rohl at krohl@indianahistory.org.

Brian Williams

Williams is a 40-year veteran of television news, and over the course of his career he has covered everything from political conventions and Presidential elections to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflict in the Middle East, natural disasters, and countless mass-casualty tragedies in the United States and abroad. He has traveled to more than two dozen countries and interviewed six American Presidents.

His work has been rewarded with a dozen Emmy Awards, 11 Edward R. Murrow awards, the DuPont-Columbia award, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the industry’s highest honor — the George Foster Peabody Award, which he received for his extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

During the decade he spent as Anchor and Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, it was the most-watched news broadcast in the United States — and Williams was viewed by more people on a daily basis than any other broadcaster. At the time of his retirement from NBC, he was the anchor of the critically-acclaimed Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams, which chronicled the 2020 election and its aftermath, including the January 6th insurrection and the failed attempt to overturn a Presidential election.

Williams joined NBC in 1993 after a dozen years in local news. Two years later, he was named Chief White House Correspondent. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, he became a favorite of late-night talk show audiences, and in 2008 he became the first evening news anchor to host Saturday Night Live. Williams was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame by fellow member Bruce Springsteen. After 28 years at NBC News, he signed off the air for the last time on December 9, 2021.

Beyond his family, his first love has always been firefighting — and that remains true today. He applied for enrollment in the fire academy at the age of 18, and has served as a volunteer firefighter for many years. He is currently an active and fully-accredited member of the fire service in Ocean County, New Jersey. He has been a member of the Leary Firefighters Foundation Board of Directors for 9 years, where he is proud to advocate for the needs of the nation’s 130,000 volunteer firefighters.