Education
A native of Denver, Colorado, Drinkwater attended Pomona College, where he co-founded KSPC radio and earned a bachelor"s degree in 1958. The following year he received a Master of Arts at the a University of California at Berkeley.
A native of Denver, Colorado, Drinkwater attended Pomona College, where he co-founded KSPC radio and earned a bachelor"s degree in 1958. The following year he received a Master of Arts at the a University of California at Berkeley.
Drinkwater was also an anchorman for the West Coast editions of the Columbia Broadcasting System Evening News, covering events that occurred after the East Coast version with Walter Cronkite aired. Drinkwater"s first major break in broadcasting came when he was hired in 1959 as general manager of Pacifica Radio KPFK-FM, a public station in Los Los Angeles Drinkwater joined Columbia Broadcasting System News in 1963, after working as a reporter at television station KTLA in Los Los Angeles
At Columbia Broadcasting System, his main assignment was as a regional correspondent, "roaming the West from the Rocky Mountains to Alaska." Drinkwater and fellow Columbia Broadcasting System News correspondent, Roger Mudd, were on scene in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
He covered such notable events as the 1974 kidnapping of Patricia "Patty" Hearst and the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. He once received a 90-day suspension from Columbia Broadcasting System for representing a wine-company employee as a satisfied customer.
Drinkwater filed his last report for Columbia Broadcasting System News in August 1988. He died at his home in Malibu, California at the age of 53 after a six-year battle with cancer.
At the time of his death, he was senior correspondent in the Los Angeles Bureau of Columbia Broadcasting System News.