Early Life and Career
Donaldson was born in El Paso, Texas, the son of Chloe (née Hampson), a school teacher, and Samuel Donaldson, a farmer. He grew up on the family farm in Chamberino, New Mexico, which his father had bought in 1910, two years before New Mexico was admitted to the Union.
He attended New Mexico Military Institute as well as Texas Western College (now known as University of Texas at El Paso) where he served as station manager of KTEP, the campus radio station, and joined the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. From 1956 to 1959, Donaldson served on active duty as an artillery officer in the United States Army, attaining the rank of Captain (USAR). While on active duty in 1958, Donaldson was one of the military observers of an atomic test in the Nevada testing grounds when an atomic device with a yield roughly equivalent to the bombs dropped on Japan was detonated three thousand yards away from the slit trench which protected the observers.
Following military service, Donaldson was hired by KRLD-TV (now KDFW-TV), the then-CBS television affiliate in Dallas, Texas. After a year, he resigned and moved to New York City to look for a job in broadcast news. He failed to get one.
He was hired by WTOP-TV (currently WUSA-TV) in Washington, D.C., in February 1961. He covered both local and national stories, including the Goldwater Presidential campaign in 1964, the Senate debates on the civil rights bill in March 1964, and the Medicare bill the next year. He anchored the 6 PM Saturday and Sunday evening newscasts with John Douglas doing the weather forecasts. And shortly before resigning in October 1967, to take a job with ABC News, he was named the anchor of the first half hour of the station's early evening news broadcast, Newsnight.
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