About Patrick Trese

Patrick Trese, an original staff member of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, was born in Detroit during the Depression and raised in Cleveland during the second World War. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed when he was a junior in high school and the Cold War began. 

Trese was not drafted until 1953 but by that time he had finished high school, spent a year as a Jesuit novice, left and finished college and wrote sports for the local NBC radio station. The fighting in Korea ended about the time Trese finished his 18-week basic infantry training. The Army assigned him to write for the Armed Forces Press Service in New York where the young soldiers, sailors and airmen watched the Army-McCarthy hearings on TV. 

During his 30 years at NBC News, he shared several Emmys and a Peabody for “Tornado! Xenia, Ohio” which showed how a local newspaper helped this small town recover from sudden disaster. (The Gazette won a Pulitzer.) 

His book about making documentary films in Antarctica in 1957-58, Penguins Have Square Eyes, was published in 1962. 

Caril, the story of Caril Ann Fugate, who became involved with mass-murderer Charles Starkweather and was convicted of first-degree murder at age 15, was published in 1972. It was based on his NBC News prime-time iinvestigative documentary Growing Up in Prison.

After retirement, he wrote the 10-part PBS series America Goes to War, narrated by Eric Sevareid, and 12 episodes of The 20th Century series narrated by Mike Wallace. 

Bitter Medicine, which he co-authored with Richard E. Kessler, MD, dramatized how the doctor used malpractice cases as teaching tools for his medical students. 

Trese’s work has taken him to a lot of places large and small but he resides now in New York on the west side of the border between the Broadway theater district and Hell’s Kitchen.