Background
Goddard was born July 5, 1904 in Binghamton, New York He attended Princeton University and had a first career in print and broadcast journalism.
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Don Goddard
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Princeton University.
Career
During the 1940s, he served as a reporter and radio announcer for the National Broadcasting Company Blue Network. In addition, he narrated a series of classroom-based teenage advice films, "You and Your Family" and "You and Your Friends", both in 1946, and he served as commentator for the early National Broadcasting Company News television show, "Watch the World". He served as American Broadcasting Company"s anchor of the "American Broadcasting Company Evening News", from 1958-1959, replacing John Charles Daly in on early-evening news for one year, while American Broadcasting Company attempted a late-evening newscast, which Daly hosted.
While serving as a newscaster for American Broadcasting Company News, he was one of their primary announcers to break the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
While American Broadcasting Company announcer Editor Silverman was the first to announce the bulletin, it was Goddard who helmed the network"s initial coverage of the tragedy. Goddard also was the host of the American Broadcasting Company television series Medical Horizons, an on-the-scene documentary about medical advances at American hospitals and research centers.
He retired in 1970 as head of American Broadcasting Company"s Biographical and History Archive, which he had helped to establish. That experience led to his working with alcoholism after he retired and moved to Arizona, first becoming a consultant to the Mile High Council on Alcoholism and then joining the staff of Saint Luke"s Chemical Dependency Program in Phoenix as a consultant and therapist.
As a therapist Goddard developed special treatments for older people with addictions.
His "Top o" the Hill Gang" for patients over 55 at Saint Luke"s fostered similar programs at clinics across the country. Goddard died March 20, 1994 in Sun City, Arizona.
