In March Brandon Stoddard ‘50 was inducted into The Television Academy Hall of Fame for his career in television production that included Roots, Winds of War, The Thorn Birds, The Day After and more.

In accepting the award, Brandon spoke of growing up without a television because his parents feared that “television would destroy all culture as we knew it.” But in 1953 they purchased a small set for the sole purpose of watching the McCarthy trials. Unbeknownst to them, late at night Brandon would watch more television and was “dazzled.”

When he was an undergraduate at Yale in 1957, Brandon’s father was an attorney defending “communists” in New Haven federal court and Brandon visited the trial. His father took the risk of losing the bulk of his practice in order to defend this group that Brandon recalls looking “about as scary as a knitting group.” After a year, they were found innocent.

Brandon studied law at Columbia but followed a path that led him to ABC in the late 1970s. Like his father, Brandon took extraordinary risks in his career. Despite threats to his family and a lack of advertising for some of the groundbreaking programs he developed, Brandon held to his belief that television should not just entertain but enlighten and bring new ideas to the audience. “The subconscious themes of freedom and justice planted by my father that afternoon in a New Haven courtroom began to emerge” in his programs.

On behalf of the Unquowa adults who are familiar with the programs Brandon developed and the young students and alums who will, someday, surely watch those same shows and feel their transformational personal impact, we congratulate Brandon on his recent honor.