In Honor of Robert L. Hilliard

June 25 marks the 100th birthday of Robert Hilliard, a key figure in the establishment of public broadcasting in the United States. He was also a World War II hero, not for killing anyone but for saving hundreds of lives. Hilliard, this writer’s first cousin once removed, contacted me through the results of a DNA test, late in 2020.

Roger with Cousin Bob, Florida, 2021

Cousin Bob was Chief of Public Broadcasting at the FCC from 1964 to 1980, and a key person in implementing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing guidelines for the operation of PBS and NPR. He left government when Reagan took office and then taught mass media for many years at Emerson College in Boston, eventually retiring to Florida, where I met him in 2021 on Sanibel Island.

Bob told me that he had written 40 books, so I checked the Seattle library to see what might be there, which turned out to be three of them. The one I picked out was entitled “Surviving the Americans.” (Coincidentally, 2 years before I discovered it, my brother Peter had published a book called “Surviving the Peace,” about post-war Bosnia.)

Private Robert Hilliard, 1945

In his book, Bob recounted his time in the US Army at the end of World War II as part of the occupation forces in defeated Germany. He had been wounded earlier in the war, and upon recovery he was appointed editor of an army newspaper, based on his college and professional experience. That gave him the freedom to go off base to pursue any story. He soon discovered that hundreds of Jews from German concentration camps, many of them barely surviving, were being poorly treated by their liberators, the American troops.

Quickly, Bob and an army buddy organized food, clothing, and shelter. It took longer to get official military aid for the victims, with pleas for support that they organized ultimately reaching the desk of President Truman, who, 6 months after the war’s end, ordered Commanding General Eisenhower to provide what was needed.

Bob continues to write. He is working on a revised edition of “Surviving the Americans” and a new novel, “The Displaced,” which are expected to be in publication by his birthday.

For several videos that tell his life story, go to roger.lippnet.us/Hilliard.htm [case sensitive].

~Roger Lippman