LONG LIVE THE BARD The Bard is gone. Long live the Bard. I'll miss him. Charles Kuralt, described parts of his illustrious career in his fifth book, "My Life On the Road." He recalled how he began his wanderlust for travel while he was still "in the womb." "We lived north of Wilmington, North Carolina, and when I was about to be born my father packed my mother up in our pickup truck and took Route 17 south to Wilmington to the hospital. So I was on the road even before I began life." Kuralt, who led a loyal "Sunday Morning" congregation for 15 years, stepped down from his pulpit on April 10. The broadcast veteran called it a day at the close of last week's edition of the 90-minute news and features program, which he anchored since its inception in 1979. "Time for us to part, you and I," said Kuralt, who only three weeks earlier announced his retirement from CBS News after 37 years. "I aim to do some traveling and reading and writing," he told those around him, "and to watch this program the civilized way for a change -- in my bathrobe, while having breakfast." Displaying modesty that politicians and Oscar winners should model, Kuralt kept his sign off to a tight 60 seconds, including the recitation of a poem by Clarence Day that goes, in part: "Farewell, my friends, farewell and hail; I'm off to seek the Holy Grail ... Tiddly-widdly-toodle-oo." After the final fade out, Kuralt was met with cheers from current and former colleagues, who had gathered with their families, in Studio 42 at CBS' West 57th Street Broadcast Center. "I was careful not to be at all emotional on the air," Kuralt reported. "But when I said 'Goodbye' and the show was off the air and everybody applauded, it did sort of get to me." At the party, champagne glasses were raised in a toast, and a cake came adorned with a model of the van that Kuralt made famous with the "On the Road" reports that he launched in 1967. Atop the miniature van sat a tiny replica of Kuralt with fishing pole in hand. Last Sunday's edition served up what, for it, was an unexceptional mix that included pieces about Major League knuckleballers, springtime in war-torn Sarajevo, actress Claire Bloom, cartoonist Charles Addams and a global choir of thousands. Such a diverse bill of fare became a Sunday morning staple after the program began -- quietly, of course -- on Jan. 28, 1979. Upon celebrating his 15th anniversary with the show, and making critically acclaimed contributions to CBS' Winter Olympics coverage, Kuralt decided the time had come to end the career that he began in 1957 as a 22-year-old radio writer on CBS' overnight news desk. "I'm really eager to stick a notebook in my hip pocket and go out there alone, and try being a reporter again," Kuralt said. He plans to write a book -- his sixth -- about America. Kuralt doesn't plan to vanish from the network. "God help us! There's going to be a Charles Kuralt retrospective show," Kuralt confided. "Don't ever retire. A greater fuss is made than you anticipate, I warn ya." I am eagerly awaiting his next book. His style and grace I affectionately call, the "Kuralt School of Journalism." Few men in the American public eye merit hero worship. Kuralt is, however, one of them. His celebration of life, of the beauty of people, places, and things inspired me all throughout his career. I remember in 1965 when I was a freshman at The Ohio State University how much I looked forward every day to the 5 minute blips of pure joy that Kuralt brought each evening on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. For a few moments, I would be whisked off to some small "postage stamp" of America. His stories weren't about the Kennedys and the Trumps of the world. They were about common, ordinary, hardworking, decent, spiritual, creative, unique people who would never appear as one of People Magazine's "25 Most Fascinating People in America." Kuralt would interview some small town shoemaker who still took time to replace heels on any pair of shoes that a patron brought in to him. We would watch as the man lovingly restored the footwear to use once again. The shoemaker would tell stories about the people based upon the history of the shoes he knew so intimately. Once he visited with a man who built his entire home from bottles that he found in local trash piles. The man cemented bottles into walls and over a period of years "built of home of glass that when the sun shone on the walls outside, not even the windows in Notre Dame Cathedral could rival the brilliant rays that shown into that home." Another time, Kuralt traveled along old Route 66 for a few miles and captured the mystery of that fabled highway. "Sometime many years ago, we can imagine Tom Joad and his family traveling along this path on their way to the sunkist valleys of California hoping to make a new life for themselves in a land as foreign to them as New York." Kuralt told so many stories over the years that they are just a blur in my subconscious mind. However, I am always enchanted the moment I get out on any highway and move across this vast land. I believe it was Kuralt's stories that influenced me to undertake hundreds of hitchhiking trips across the country. It didn't matter to me where I was going. All I wanted was to be off and where I ended up didn't matter. After my first week at OSU, I packed my bag one night and told my roommates that I was going to Boston. They thought I was crazy. I left Friday morning and returned late Sunday night. Along the way, I met a host of characters, and spent no more than $15 dollars. Nearly 30 years later, I still can remember the joy of being free on the road for the first time. When I returned from a three week cross country trip from California to Ohio, my mother asked me what I was going to do now that I was home and didn't have a job and had precious little money in my pocket. "I'm going to New Mexico. I met some neat people along the way and they told me I could come and live with them." She was shocked. I left the next morning for the "Land of Enchantment" and didn't come back for year. Kuralt stepped into my life and affected my behaviors, my thoughts, and most of all, my beliefs. He is gone from the air waves, and only the memories remain. Ah, but what powerful memories he bequeathed to me. I'm sure another hero will come along to take his place. Those are big shoes to fill. I'll be ready though because there is still inside of me the wanderlust and I can't imagine it's ever disappearing. Goodnight, Charles, from Duhring, population 9, nestled in a valley along Spring Creek in the Allegheny National Forest in the northern tier of Penn's Woods. I'll miss you.