z8 PROFILES IN PROMINENCE SEAN CALLEBS

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SEAN CALLEBS CREATIVITY AND INGENUITY

by Pat Dickson

Mickey and Minnie and the rest of the gang cavort there now, but when Sean Callebs moved to an area near Orlando, Florida as an infant, it was still a pristine, sprawling

area where dreams of the Magic Kingdom were still mere figments dancing in the heads of Disney executives.

" ... the basis of success as you progress through life ... is about the relationships you have with people."

Today, Disney Worldthe place that dreams are made of-occupies those wide-open spaces where he roamed as a small child. And Sean Callebs has realized a dream of his own, which many aspire to, but few realize. The charismatic Callebs has climbed the ladder of competitive broadcast

journalism and has been a standout correspondent for CNN for more than 15 years, reporting from all over the globe.

He's been in Afghanistan and interviewed the president of that country. He was a financial reporter working with Lou Dobbs. He's gamely reported on hurricanes while standing outside to demonstrate their strength. He's covered the seemingly endless O.J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles, reported on the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion and landed an exclusive, scoop on the confession of Michael Fortier, one of the defendants in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

PROFILES IN PROMINENCE

And, although he's traveled all over the world, interviewing everyone from powerful world leaders and the latest trendy celebrities to everyday citizens caught up in a newsworthy event, Sean is never far ~rom hi~ West Virginia roots. He spent a good deal of his life growing up m Huntmgton and he is a proud graduate of Marshall University.

The son of John Callebs, a college administrator and faculty member, and Nora, now a psychiatric social worker, Sean was an "academic brat," traveling to colleges and universities as his father's career advanced. John's career path eventually led him to Marshall when Sean was in elementary school. When Sean was 13, the Callebs family moved to Bethany where he found a new friend and an outlet for his athletic abilities.

"That was a cool time," he remembers. "I was into athletics and my best friend's dad was the athletic director at Bethany and he had keys to the field house. We played basketball; we had access to footballs so we'd go to the field and kick them around, and we would go into the weight room and work out. It was like a huge playground for us."

After a three-year stay, the family returned to Huntington when John took ~n administrative post at Marshall . John was one of the key people assigned to handle the grim details of the 1970 Marshall plane crash that killed 75 individuals including football players, coaches, crew, staff, and boosters.

"Dad was instrumental in making arrangements after the plane crash," Sean recalls. "I remember that day vividly but one of the things I don't remember is seeing my dad around. He was an assistant to a vice president and I know now they were trying to find the plane's manifest and find out who was on the plane and who was not. There was a team of people, including Dad, who had the terrible task of calling families. It's one of the things you never forget. I don ' t think anybody who grew up in Huntington will ever forget it. It just ripped the soul out of this community."

. Sean attended Marshall with Keith Morehouse, now sports ?1rector for WSAZ-TV, and his wife, Debbie, both of whom lost parents m the crash. Sean became good friends with the couple. "They are just wonderful people," he says. "I call and stay in touch with them and try to see them when I'm in Huntington."

30 PROFILES IN PROMINENCE

"Even though Sean was just a year ahead of me, I was impressed that he was already interning at a television station and he was ahead of the curve, so he was a kind of mentor for me," Morehouse recalls. "We did stories together and we always had a great time. Sean has an unbelievable sense of humor which made working with him so much fun. He was ambitious even back then."

For some time Sean had bounced from school to school and Huntington was no different. He attended Huntington High for one year and then transferred to Huntington East, from which he graduated. He came to Marshall, more or less on a whim.

"I had planned to take the year off so I didn't apply," he recalls. "But everyone I knew was excited about going to Marshall, so I thought, what the heck, I'll go too. That turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life."

The one-time reluctant student tackled college life with his usual enthusiasm. After enrolling for a summer course he took 18 hours his first semester, working toward a degree in print journalism. He was studying, but he also was having fun. "I didn't do too well that first semester," he says truthfully.

At Marshall he made lasting friendships, people who still are important to him and who continue to be part of his life. "My freshman year I worked on The Parthenon with Mike Cherry who is now a sportswriter for the Charleston Gazette. I met the Morehouses and, of course, my best friend, Doug Brown." And most importantly, he met his future wife, Marcy Butler.

Brown, a Marshall graduate who owns his own production company operating out of Orlando, recalls his first meeting with Sean. "I was looking for a place to live and at that time the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity would rent rooms in their house to non-members for the summer. I went to look at a room and met Sean, who was the only resident at that time. He was cooking on a little Bunsen burner type stove and he asked me to stay for dinner. We had instant chemistry, we just clicked."

The pair became roommates that fall and they've stayed in touch to this day, chatting by phone several times a week. They're in tune both figuratively and literally.

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"We've always had common interests. Sean loves music and he plays the guitar. One day I picked up one of his guitars and learned to play. Music is a big part of his life and I always say he can play the beginning of any song. To this day he'll call me and say 'listen to this' and he'll play some chords and I'll supply the rest. Most people don't know this, but he also writes songs. Mostly they're funny things that he'll forget about the next day, but he really is talented when it comes to music."

The pair has worked together professionally and that's always an adventure, Brown says. They once spent two weeks in Alaska working on a program called Earth Matters for CNN and their professional paths have crossed several times in the intervening years.

"The biggest quality Sean has that has helped him professionally is that he still sees the world as a 12-year-old boy," Brown says of his friend. "He looks at everything as if it were new. That helps what he does as a journalist because he is able to put a fresh face on stories. He finds creative ways to get things across."

So, at Marshall Sean was putting his creative abilities to work in the journalism department and working on The Parthenon. In fact, Sean's journalistic talents were so good he was named the summer editor of The Parthenon. And during that time he became friends with another up and coming Marshall journalist, Joe Johns, who would go on to have a top-level reporting career with NBC and CNN. Then a conversation with one of his journalism professors changed not only his career path, but his life.

"Bos Johnson has had such an impact on my life," Sean says with admiration. "Of all the people I've dealt with in my life, he has had the most positive impact. He could be everything from a teacher to a buddy to a colleague to an administrator. He's just a great person and I owe him a lot."

Johnson, who had a long and distinguished career as reporter/ anchor/news director at WSAZ-TV before coming to Marshall as a faculty member, called Sean into his office one day and asked if he would be interested in pursuing broadcast journalism. It didn't take long for the aspiring journalist to say yes. And so began an outstanding career both behind and in front of the cameras.


Johnson remembers that session with Sean. "I hoped he might try broadcast journalism. He did a good job in my classes, but he was not the easiest person to teach," Johnson says with a chuckle. "He challenged everything; he always had to know why I said what I said."

Sean Callebs has always had an insatiable need to know how things work and he is interested in the minute details, traits that have stood him in good stead as a journalist. But his curiosity sometimes got him into trouble, even at an early age. He tells a story about himself when he was just a youngster still living in Florida. A window pane in a storm door had been broken and a glazier came to the house to fix it. Sean watched intently as the man took the old glass out, measured, cut and fitted a new pane, puttied it and polished it up so that it looked good as new. Because he was so fascinated by the work the man had just completed he wanted to see it done one more time.

"I was wearing shorts and cowboy boots," Sean remembers with amusement. "And when the man was done, I went over to the door and kicked the pane out with my boot. I just wanted to watch him do it again. Needless to say, my mother was not amused. She tanned my bottom pretty good."

Creativity and ingenuity have always been among Sean's traits. And it was also in Florida that the family's famous chocolate ornament incident took place, demonstrating both. The Christmas he was two the family tree was adorned with a series of elaborate chocolate ornaments. Arising before dawn, well before their parents, Sean and his older sister Liz crept into the living room where they happily foraged among the presents under the tree.

That year a politically incorrect Santa left Sean a bazooka. Together, Sean and Liz figured out how to load it and then the two promptly used it to shoot every chocolate ornament off the tree. "We had eaten all of them before our parents got up," Sean recalls. "When they saw what we'd done they were more surprised that we had been able to put everything together than they were angry."

It soon became apparent that broadcast journalism and the inquisitive Callebs were a good fit. Sean has always had a knack of making friends and one in particular helped him get a foot in the door of a television studio.


"I was working at a hospital to make some extra money and I knew Justin Gibson, whose mother, Jean Dean, later became mayor of Huntington. Justin was running a camera for WSAZ and I asked him to get me an interview to operate a studio camera. He did and John Clay hired me to run a camera. At that time they replayed the newscast on Friday and Saturday nights so I would go home and wait up until 1 or so in the morning just to look at my camera shots. I got to know the on-air people at the station and after six months there were some changes. Christy Perry, who was an intern, was promoted to part-time and the news director asked me if I wanted to become an intern. Of course I said yes, but I had to go back and get John Clay's permission to make the change. He was the typical engineer, low key, smart as a whip, very savvy technically, kind of gruff. He just said, 'Yeah, I figured you would do that anyway, go ahead and start tomorrow."' Just like that, with little fanfare, Sean had made the switch from behind the camera to in front of it.

Sean's background as a writer stood him in good stead as now he was required to both write and read his own copy, but the thought of composing for on-air presentation was scary.

"I'd written what seemed like zillions of stories for The Parthenon and other publications but the first time I had to write something for on-air, I was so nervous. But I really liked being in front of the camera. I liked reporting and I was relatively comfortable being on-air. We didn't have teleprompters in those days; it was all reading from live copy. But at least you never lost your place when the teleprompters shut down!"

And he offers a totally candid assessment of his early days as an on-camera reporter. "I was terrible," he says with a laugh. "Now I look back at some of those early newscasts and I just cringe."

But he learned quickly and his delivery soon became more polished and professional. It was an exciting time for the young and eager journalist and he was covering all kinds of stories. He was in sports for a year and also doubled as a weekend anchor. The everenthusiastic and hard-working Callebs was working his way up the ladder and he was getting noticed.


Rob Johnson, son ofBos Johnson and a well-respected, longtime reporter and anchor at WSAZ himself, recalls working with Sean during those early days. "I was an intern then and Sean was three years ahead of me. He was so kind to me. He took me under his wing and I've always considered Sean to be my role model. The attitude he displayed toward me is one I'm trying to carry on here at the station. I try to treat the interns the way Sean treated me."

The Johnson and the Callebs families struck up a friendship that has lasted through the years. "We still keep in touch and Sean always makes it a point to get together with us whenever he can when he comes to town," says Johnson. "The only problem we've ever had is that he's a Huntington East graduate and I graduated from Huntington High. How could he have gone so wrong to have switched schools!"

After graduating from Marshall in 1979, and after several years covering local stories for WSAZ, Sean decided to seek work in a bigger market. In 1985, he was hired by WIS in Columbia, South Carolina. He liked the area even though "Columbia is the hottest spot on earth," he says wryly. By this time he had married Marcy Butler and over the next few years three children arrived: Shawna, Caitlin and Ryan,

Sean continued to hone his writing skills, which he feels are the foundation for every good journalist, something that the broadcast journalism department at Marshall stressed. "The best reporters, anchors, all the outstanding people I've worked with, all were good writers. They know how to tell a story and that's what it all comes down to. You have to be able to write in a different fashion, be succinct, and move on."

To this day Sean still writes all of his own copy. "I am adamant about this," he says. "It gets run past a copy editor but I write everything that comes out of my mouth. The people I think most highly of are really good writers. The more work you put into writing, the more rewards you'll have. And after a broadcasting career ends, you'll always have something to fall back on."

He covered an incredibly eclectic array of stories while in South Carolina. He was writing his own copy, reporting on camera and anchoring weekends.


Ironically, Bos Johnson says he always believed Sean's real forte was as a reporter. "His real field was reporting, yet when he went off to South Carolina he was promptly assigned to be an anchor. And he became a good one. That proves something I've regularly said in my television classes. Who knows how anyone will grow in any area? Sean really developed and he has done a lot of anchoring as well as reporting for CNN, both for Headline News and for CNN itself. He has done everything very, very well."

"I covered everything at WIS, (which stands for Wonderful Iodine State), mostly education because the University of South Carolina is there in addition to two large school districts," Sean says. But his versatility soon led him to cover widely divergent stories. Without doubt, one of the hardest stories he had to cover was an execution at which he was a witness.

"It was a really gruesome experience," Sean remembers. "It was an execution using the electric chair." It was there that he met David Bruck, who went on to defend Susan Smith, who was convicted of drowning her two children. "The execution really bothered me and I talked with him afterward and we became friends," Sean says. "We stayed in touch and I later interviewed him for CNN when he was defending Susan Smith. He helped me to deal with my feelings after the execution."

By 1989, Sean again decided to cast a net for employment in a larger market. On impulse he applied to CNN, took a writing test in Atlanta and went back to Columbia to map out future plans. He didn't have long to wait. CNN interviewed him and promptly hired him as a writer. In September 1989 the Callebs family packed up and moved to Atlanta. And then pandemonium broke loose in the news business.

"It seems the second I started, everything just broke loose," he says with a laugh. "I couldn't believe how busy the world had become. In the first six months I was at CNN, there was an earthquake in California during the World Series, the U.S. invaded Panama, and communism collapsed in Russia."

He was content to be a writer but still there was always the tantalizing lure of on-camera work for one of the world's largest media


outlets. And then Bob Furnad entered the picture. Now retired and teaching at the University of Georgia, Furnad was an executive vice president and senior executive producer at CNN who later became president of Headline News. And he remembers vividly how Sean Callebs' on-camera career began at CNN.

"Sean began work at CNN as a writer," Furnad says. "He was hired by a woman who worked for me who was in charge of writers and copy editors. Not long after he started working, he introduced himself to me. Sean is certainly not a shy person. He was working in the newsroom when we got involved in covering Gulf War I. All the resources of the network were directed toward covering the Gulf War. We weren't spending time or money on any other stories unless they were connected in some way with the war. At some point during the war there was a major snowstorm and we needed to send someone to cover it, but all our reporters were tied up. I remembered that Sean had told me he had done some on-camera reporting so I said, 'How about going out and covering this?' and he said 'sure.' It involved a live shot and he did quite well."

Furnad said that one-shot story got Sean noticed. "People here took notice. Here was this face that we were unfamiliar with, at least on the air. Most people didn't know he had this background, the training and this ability. From then on there were other opportunities for him to do stories for the Southeast Bureau in Atlanta, which covers a very big area. He was doing pieces on all kinds of stories and doing ... stories because he wanted to get on the air. It just evolved into his becoming a full-time reporter for CNN News Source, which is a syndication service which at one point had over 750 affiliates."

The enterprising journalist got where he is because, according to Furnad, "Sean is a guy who is extremely conscientious, and who has a fantastic work ethic. He is a solid journalist, a good writer, a solid performer on air. He has good credibility, good voice quality, good presentation, he looks good on the air-he's just a natural. He's a pleasure to work with, a unique individual."

Except, Furnad says, laughing, "If he's not busy and you're his boss, then he's a pain in the neck because he's bugging you all the time-because he wants to do more!"


Sean's sharp reporting skills and his smooth on-air presentations, coupled with his telegenic good looks, did indeed get him noticed. If as some print reporters joke that they have "radio faces," Sean was blessed with a near-perfect appearance for television reporting, with a face that is both photogenic and expressive, coupled with a polished and poised persona. He soon was assigned to cover environmental issues, which sent him all over the country as well as to Guatemala and Mexico. And once again, he was in the weekend anchor chair.

As an environmental reporter he and a camera crew were kept busy criss-crossing the country, chasing headline-making storms and covering major floods such as the devastating ones that occurred in the Midwest in 1993. And heading into a storm or a hurricane could be an eerie experience, he says. "Most of the time our crew would be heading directly into the storms while the roads going away from them would be clogged with people who were evacuating. At the height of the storm, places otherwise busy would be completely deserted except for us." One of the most memorable storms he covered was Hurricane Isabel in September 2003.

He was doing so well at CNN he was tapped to work for CNN Financial News, where he worked with Lou Dobbs, CNN's financial guru. The assignment meant a move from Atlanta to New York, a city he fell in love with almost at first sight. And forget all the bad things you've heard about New York. He didn't see any, he says.

"I loved New York. If there were any bad parts, I didn't see them. There was so much to do and see and it's easy to meet people. By this time my kids were living 'on the Jersey Shore with their mother so it was relatively easy to see them. New York has so much to offer; it was just a lot of fun."

He worked the financial beat for more than two years. "It was like learning a foreign language," he says. "I did stand-up reports in front of the New York Stock Exchange, as well as anchoring for CNN FN and doing stories for Money line. I did quite a bit of traveling during that time and it was quite an education, learning the financial part. There were a lot of exciting things going on then as the market was building up and finances were booming."


The work was exacting and demanding. "Lou Dobbs is no wallflower," Callebs says candidly. "If you weren't doing a good job you would hear about it. And you don't want to be on the other end of that!"

Leaving financial reporting behind, he returned to work for CNN Newsource, the world's most extensive news feed service with more than 750 network affiliates and independent stations nationwide.

"Working for Newsource, you do stories that run on CNN Headline News and you also provide coverage of live stories for affiliates such as those in Portland, Dallas, Seattle, for big cities and small towns. For example, we did live shots from the 9-11 site for affiliates and we cover big stories along with feature stories."

He did score coups in some high-profile stories. He got an exclusive interview with Michael Fortier, who was charged as a coconspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing. Because his was the only interview with Fortier, the prosecution used his story as evidence in the conspiracy trial. He ran into Bruck, who showed him Susan Smith's confession, which had not yet been made public. And he had an exclusive interview with Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, who ended up giving him a hat from his personal wardrobe.

He went to Afghanistan immediately after reporting from Ground Zero on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. He and a crew spent five weeks there, but not before they all had undergone an intensive five-day hostile training session in London. "We were taught how to deal with medical emergencies, how to take care not only of yourself but of others, how not to do stupid things and how not to compound things if you get into trouble. And most of all it was drummed into us that we were never, ever to go anyplace alone."

The group, which in addition to Sean included a producer, cameraman, engineer and translator, were housed together in a small house. For the CNN crew their first view of Kabul was one of total devastation. "When we landed there were all these blown-up airplanes and the airport itself was devoid of windows. Everything looked so beaten down," he recalls . .

The tight-knit group worked closely and amazingly, according to Sean, life was relatively normal. "We were there to cover whatever


was going on at the time. We traveled around, and came back and wrote and edited the pieces. We wore jackets and helmets and just used common sense. Our translator was a physician who worked with us during the day and then went out to tend to the sick and injured in the evenings. I still stay in touch with him as well as a couple of others."

He's nonchalant about his experience in that war-torn country. "It wasn't like a day at the beach," he admits. "But we had David Rust, a cameraman who had been everywhere. We trusted him, we'd follow him anywhere. I don't want to make it sound like too much, some might think it was a cakewalk, but in reality it had its moments. We knew that any time we could become targets rather than just reporters."

His mother, Nora Callebs, remembers that time as one of apprehension for her. "Sean has been a concerned and kind son," she says . "He kept in contact with me when he was in Afghanistan. I was very worried, of course. He managed to call me weekly to let me know he was all right. I am so very proud of him and all that he's accomplished."

He managed to score an interview with Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. "The President always wears a distinctive type of hat," Sean says. "I wanted to get one like it but the only one I could find was a cheap knockoff I saw in a shop window. I bought it anyway and took it to the interview and showed him. He immediately gave me a lecture on how inferior and poorly made it was. Just before we concluded the interview an aide approached us with something wrapped in tissue and presented it to me. It was one of President Karzai own personal hats. I thanked him for it and later gave it to David Rust who has a fantastic collection of items he's picked up around the world which he presents to museums. So now somewhere in the United States a museum has an authentic Karzai hat."

Upon his return from Afghanistan, Sean resumed a frenetic schedule that took him all over the country, with occasional forays overseas. He was not only available but eager to cover breaking news wherever it happened. Like Forrest Gump's chocolates, he never knew what assignment he was going to get.


"I covered stories wherever they happened," the laid -back Callebs says. "Wherever they needed me and the crew, that's where we went. I went to Cuba three times, once to cover the visit of the Pope, once to cover the Elian Gonzales story, and once we were there because of a Baltimore Orioles game. Cuba is an amazing place and we were received very well. They were curious and when they talked with us they liked to practice their English."

Actually he's been on the scene of some of the biggest news stories of the past decade. He covered the 0 .J. Simpson trial for several weeks and after seeing firsthand how the trial was conducted, he wasn't surprised by the verdict. He traveled to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to provide coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. On the morning of December 14, 2003 he was anchoring on the CNN/US desk when the world learned of the capture of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

But television coverage has not always been as effortless as it seems, his mother Nora says. "He was in Florida reporting on a wildfire that seemed to be in control. The TV picture was of him reporting with the fire behind his back. I learned later that the fire had leaped from one side of the road to the other and was actually threatening him as he was reporting. He and his cameraman just managed to get out of the way of the fire. This is something a mother prefers to learn after the fact!"

One of his favorite assignments took him to Graceland, Elvis Presley's fabled home in Memphis, Tennessee, where he reported on the activities surrounding the 251

h anniversary of Elvis' death. His friend Doug Brown remembers that time fondly, since he was able to join Sean at the events.

"We're both big Elvis fans," Brown says. "One day he called and told me to get on up to Memphis. He was going to be reporting from Graceland ... So I went to Graceland and he got me credentials."

Although shoots at celebrity homes and interviews with worldfamous figures are routine now, the life of a traveling correspondent is at times downright drudgery, according to Sean.

"It's draining," he says. "You often have to travel all day and you have to be sharp when you report right after you get there. That takes


it out of you. You learn how to sleep when you can and eat when you can. But on the other hand I got to see stuff I never thought I would get to see.

"When I worked for Newsource we were a group of about 25 people, cameramen, producers, directors, reporters, a really good mix. We were a tight-knit group who got to know each other very well. Sometimes we had to cover stories that were unpleasant and people didn't want us there. But overall it was a great experience, one I wouldn't trade."

Over the years, his face has become familiar to millions of CNN viewers. But does he get recognized when he goes out in public doing everyday, ordinary citizen types of things? Surprisingly, not much, he says.

"I'm rarely recognized. Sometimes young people who usually turn out to be journalism students or aspiring journalists will approach me, most of the time to ask how to get started in the business. There are just so many of us in this business that people don't make the connection. I was recognized far more when I worked on local TV, in Huntington or Columbia. There people would come up to me in the grocery store, at a bank or at a restaurant to say hi or to comment on a show. On local television you're in people's homes every day and they really do feel as if they know you personally, but it's a friendly kind of thing."

And Doug Brown says he never thinks of Sean as a celebrity. He's just one of his oldest and closest friends. But even he gets a jolt sometimes. "I had just gotten off a plane with my crew one day and we were walking though the airport. I looked up at a big screen TV and there was Sean making a report. That always surprises me."

Keith Morehouse concurs that Sean has remained down to earth. "For someone who has achieved what he has, it would be easy for him to be pretentious about all the places he's been while working for a major news organization and all the awards he's won, but Sean is still the same guy he was in college. When we talk, it's like turning the clock back 20 years. There's just no difference."

In the spring of2004, Sean was assigned to CNN in Washington, D.C., where he currently is a general assignment reporter. His beat


now is the White House, Pentagon, Capitol Hill, National Defense, Homeland Security-in short, anything of importance that takes place in the nation's capital. There won't be as much traveling now and one of the biggest perks is that he will once again be close to his children Shawna, 17, Caitlin, 15, and Ryan, 12. Shawna is looking at colleges and her proud father is encouraging her to consider Marshall. He's delighted that Caitlin already is interested in Marshall.

And now based in Washington, he's closer to other family members. His mother lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a psychiatric social worker. His sister Liz is the Director of Sponsored Programs at American University, and their younger brother, Chris, is the minister ofMt. Zion Baptist Church in Mineral Wells, West Virginia.

Sean can only hope his children, should they decide to attend Marshall, will have as good an experience as he had. He excelled in his chosen field and began on a career path that would bring him recognition, honors, awards, and most of all, satisfaction.

And when it comes to Marshall, Sean has been generous with his time and talents. He regularly visits the campus, he speaks to groups, and he's a big supporter of the journalism program. And he enjoys getting together with old friends like the Morehouses and the Rob Johnsons. He's enormously proud that in April of2004, he was awarded Marshall's Distinguished Alumni Award.

"Sean never forgets his roots," says Rob Johnson. "He takes Marshall and West Virginia with him wherever he goes and he's done a lot of good for the university and for the region."

His father died in 1995 and Bos Johnson, who was a friend of John Callebs, said, "His dad would be so proud of him."

And he doesn't toot his horn about his numerous accomplishments, although he certainly could. For example, he won a 1993 Emmy Award for coverage of Midwestern floods and that same year was honored with a gold medal at the New York Film Festival for a special on Alaska dealing with the after effects of the EXXON Valdez spill.

But no matter when~ his assignments take him, whether it's holding down the anchor desk in a studio or doing a stand-up report dodging danger in a remote part of the world, everything always comes


own to relationships, Sean believes. "I always remember what Bob :urnad has said to me time and again. He says that the basis of success

1s you progress through life, whether it's your personal or professional life, is about the relationships you have with people. It's all about how well you get along with others. I've tried to follow his advice from my days at Marshall. That really has been my guiding principle."

Furnad's advice has served the award-winning journalist well. As Sean Callebs has climbed high on the ladder of success, he has done it with finesse, panache and an unbridled enthusiasm that has set him apart in a fiercely competitive profession. The lessons he learned as a student at Marshall and the lasting relationships he forged there have served him very well indeed.

Pat Dickson is coordinator of media and community relations on the South Charleston campus of Marshall University.

z8 PROFILES IN PROMINENCE SEAN CALLEBS

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