Charleston TV anchor Bill Sharpe, the voice of the Lowcountry, announces retirement
Bill Sharpe, the legendary local television anchor who worked at Charleston’s WCSC for nearly half a century and documented some of the Holy City’s most tragic events, announced Monday that he is retiring this fall.
Sharpe, 70, made the announcement while wrapping up Monday’s edition of “Live 5 News at Noon.” He said he will be retiring at the end of October.
“And many people in the newsroom say it’s about darn time,” Sharpe said, with a warm chuckle as a photo montage of him at the station rolled across the screen.
When meteorologist Joey Sovine said he didn’t know whether to cry or if he was over-the-moon happy for him, Sharpe replied, “You can cry right after the news is done.”
For 48 years, Sharpe and his signature Lowcountry voice told the story of Charleston one news story at a time, including some of the most devastating chapters in the city’s modern history: The destruction of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, the tragedy of the Sofa Super Store fire in 2007 that killed nine Charleston firefighters and, in 2015, the horrific hate crime at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church.
In a phone interview with The State newspaper following the 6 p.m. newscast Monday evening, Sharpe tearfully called himself “the luckiest guy in the world.”
“You know, to be able to deliver the news to your hometown was one of the great pleasures of my life,” Sharpe said.
His coverage of Hurricane Hugo, the most devastating storm in South Carolina history to date, resulted in a Peabody Award. He would go on to receive even more accolades in his 48-year career, including an Emmy.
Sharpe said covering Hugo was “the most rewarding and probably the hardest” reporting he ever did.
He remembers going into the studio early in the morning, pulling 12- and 13-hour shifts to cover the storm and its aftermath. The station, he said, simulcast their coverage with a local radio station in an effort to get information out to as many people as possible.
Even now, he recalls the small acts of humanity that he witnessed during some of Charleston’s toughest days in the weeks after the storm.
“I remember going to a traffic light and, like everything else, it was out. But I just remember seeing cars being very courteous to each other, people saying ‘No, you go.’ ‘No, you go,’” Sharpe said. “To see cars at a major intersection on Savannah Highway just trying to give other cars, other people, the chance to go first, that really touched me.”
Sharpe’s career rise
Sharpe became a fixture in the Charleston community. He remains one of the most recognizable faces in Charleston news as a trusted journalist, a frequent debate moderator and a local celebrity when spotted shopping in the grocery store.
When he announced his retirement, even anchors from competing Charleston news stations had nothing but kind words to say.
“Bill is an iconic television news anchor in this country. Viewers have come to expect his folksy warmth and plainly-spoken delivery of local and world events,” wrote Carolyn Murray, a news anchor at Charleston’s WCBD. “He is a student of world history, but would much rather spend time listening to a person talk about what happened to them that day.”
Tessa Spencer, an evening anchor at Charleston’s WCIV, called Sharpe a “consummate and unflappable journalist” who has seen Charleston through good times and bad. She said she was almost 5 years old when Sharpe began working at Charleston’s WCSC.
Born in Charleston on Oct. 15, 1950, Sharpe was a born and raised local. He grew up in West Ashley, and graduated from St. Andrews High School.
He earned his degree from Emory University in Atlanta, where he majored in English literature and got a minor in French. But he felt the pull of news. In the summertime, he worked at a local radio station.
He soon jumped into broadcasting.
Sharpe joined the WCSC crew Oct. 3, 1973, according to a write-up from the news station. He was 22 and had decided to make a leap into television after first working at WTMA-AM radio.
Sharpe’s deep local ties to Charleston made covering the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church personal.
Sharpe knew the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the state senator and pastor who was slain in the massacre, and he knew how to say his name, like it has an “e” on the end and not an “a.”
When officers arrested the shooter in North Carolina, Sharpe remembered shouting on air, “They’ve got him!”
And when family members at the bond hearing the following day offered up forgiveness to the man who killed their family members, Sharpe said he struggled to stay professional as the cameras rolled. He had to pinch himself to keep it together, he said.
“I had to pause. My voice wavered and I had to stop for a second and regain my composure and then go on with the story. That was one of the toughest moments I’ve ever experienced,” Sharpe said. “We got through it together.”
Two years later in 2017, alongside his co-anchor Debi Chard, Sharpe and Chard received the Masters Award from the South Carolina Broadcasters Association.
In 2018, the two were also inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Silver Circle, which honors those with at least 25 years in the industry.
And in August, Sharpe was named “Anchor of the Year” by the South Carolina Broadcasters Association.
In his nearly half-century of reporting, Sharpe would travel the world. One of his most interesting assignments came in 1978 when his reporting would take him all the way to Rome, where he covered the installation of Pope John Paul I.
“That’s what Channel 5 did back in those days. We took chances. We did things that nobody else here locally would do and it paid off. Always did,” Sharpe said.
With the Bishop of Charleston Ernest Unterkoefler as his guide, Sharpe said he remembered watching for the white smoke, signaling that the cardinals had elected the next pope.
Then, something incredible happened.
Sharpe said he wound up in a room with about 300 people for a private audience with the newly installed pope. Sharpe was 27 at the time, on his first international reporting trip, and no assignment, he said, would ever top it.
“Somehow they let us in, and I was about 100 feet away from him. And here I am, a kid from Charleston, having an audience with John Paul I,” Sharpe said.
‘I have been blessed’
It wouldn’t be his only brush with fame.
Sharpe interviewed the late President Ronald Reagan at the White House, and separately sat down with President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump when they were still candidates. He also met and interviewed legends in TV broadcast news, including Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer.
In addition to his reporting, Sharpe has been a vocal advocate for special needs children and families.
In 2018, alongside his son, William, Sharpe testified before state lawmakers in Columbia, and urged them to pass a bill to enforce tough punishments on bullying.
Sharpe said he doesn’t know what his next steps will be but he is certain of one thing: He has to do something other than play tennis.
Sharpe is married to his wife, Katherine. Together, they have six kids, who range in age from 15 to 23.
On Monday, he emailed the staff at the station to tell them he was retiring. He soon learned he would have to announce the news on-air, too, which he had not planned on doing so soon.
And so, at the end of four different newscasts — at noon, 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. — Sharpe told Charleston he would be retiring. “Which was three times too many,” Sharpe said by phone, laughing in spite of himself.
After almost 50 years in the TV news business, Sharpe said he feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude. As a newsman, though, he does not like to show emotion. You have to hide it on-camera, he said, to maintain your objectivity
But inside the newsroom, Monday evening, Sharpe shed a few tears on the phone.
“I have been blessed. I get to do what I love for about two more months and I’ve been doing it almost 48 years,” Sharpe said. “To be able to do that and survive in this sometimes cut-throat, back-stabbing, vicious business is just wonderful. I try to treat people, no matter who they are, the same way I’d want them to treat me. Smile. Be decent. Say something nice about them if you can find something nice to say. It goes a long way.”
He paused.
“And I would just like the people of the Lowcountry to know how grateful I am for them tuning in and joining me for so many years, for all these years,” Sharpe said.
His last day at the station will be Oct. 28.
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 2:21 PM.
