THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 24, 1995 TAG: 9510240302
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
At age 4, in the Virginia mountain town of Hillsville, Phyllis McGrady longed to learn to read.
Each night, her brother David, older by two years, sat on the couch and read from a book with their grandmother. School advisers told her parents not to let her begin early lest she be bored in school.
She hid behind the couch and, listening to her grandmother instructing David, learned to read. ``She just more or less picked it up on her own,'' her mother, Arlie McGrady, said Monday.
Phyllis McGrady, executive producer of ABC's ``PrimeTime Live,'' will speak Friday at the finale of the 1995 Women's Review series.
Lunch will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the Clarion Hotel, 4453 Bonney Road, Virginia Beach. To reserve a ticket at $18.50, call 490-7812.
McGrady's grandmother, who lived to be 104, loved history and was a gifted storyteller. So was her mother, who worked in the offices of the sheriff and Circuit Court. Her father was part owner of a Chrysler dealership.
No girls lived nearby, so she tagged after her brother and his friends and played their games.
``She was a sort of a tomboy,'' her mother said. ``She'd be playing the piano, and I'd realize the music had stopped. I'd look out the window and she'd be in the top of a tree.''
In high school, she was managing editor, reporter and columnist for The Trumpet, co-captain of the cheerleaders and a member of the Beta honorary society.
``She always loved to read,'' said her mother. ``She wrote me a long letter from college thanking me for letting her read and not giving her household chores all the time.''
After a few months at Radford College, she went to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and studied radio, television and film.
``An internship my senior year at WGN-TV in Chicago was very decisive,'' she said Monday from her ABC office in New York City. ``Working on TV productions was a tremendous experience.''
After a stint reporting for the Albany Times Union, she went to Washington and produced ``Panorama,'' a Maury Povich talk show, from 1975 to 1977.
Congressmen trooped at noon from the Capitol to talk of their actions on the Hill. Her work caught the eye of ABC News, which hired her in 1977.
``When I was growing up, my interest in journalism stemmed from watching documentaries,'' she said. They nurtured her views on life and people, but they weren't being produced anymore.
In 1991 she was executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning ABC News special ``Pearl Harbor: Two Hours That Changed the World,'' commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
She worked with ABC News President Roone Arledge in shaping the ABC News magazine ``Prime Time Live,'' which began in 1989, anchored by Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson. She became its executive producer in 1994.
She revived documentaries by combining them with storytelling techniques. One such was the ABC News magazine ``Turning Point,'' premiering in March 1994 anchored by Sawyer, Barbara Walters and Peter Jennings.
Her work has won many awards. ``The storytelling, I'm sure I learned from my mother and grandmother, as well as my interest in history,'' she said.
That was a prime time. ILLUSTRATION: CAPITAL CITIES/ABC INC.
Phyllis McGrady, who will be the final speaker for the 1995 Women's
Review series.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE INTERVIEW by CNB