Herbert Morrison was a radio news broadcaster that witnessed the Hindenburg Disaster while he was recording a live coverage of the attempted landing of the airship on May 6th 1937. Little is known of Morrison's early life, his career prior to the on-site report he gave of the Hindenburg's fiery destruction and of his career subsequent to the tragedy.
Biography
Morrison was born on May 14th, 1905 in the small town of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh near Scottdale. He was the son of Walter Lindsay and Bertha Oglevee Morrison. By the time Morrison was five years old, the family was living on Market Street in nearby Scottdale Borough, three miles north of Connellsville. The family did not include his father, who passed away when Morrison was just a toddler. According to the 1910 U.S. census, the household included his widowed mother, his grandmother, an older brother, and an adult cousin, Nettie Herbert, who worked as a stenographer at a local “sheet mill.” In addition to the several members of his family, two boarders paid to live with the Morrisons and served to provide an extra source of income. Morrison’s brother, Walter, was four years his elder and sometimes went by his middle name, Franklin.
Herbert Morrison’s mother supported their family by holding several jobs over the ensuing years while continuing to welcome extended family and boarders. When Morrison was fourteen years old, his mother was employed as a saleslady in a jewelry store. Ten years later, in 1930, she worked as a radiotrician in Scottdale. Little did she know that her position in communications foreshadowed Morrison’s future vocation. It’s surely possible that her job influenced Morrison who was now 24, still living at home, and working a dead end job as a salesman in a shoe store. Seven years later, he would be working in a new profession that would change the course of his life.
At some point after 1930, Morrison was employed as a news reporter for WLS, a large AM radio station affiliated with NBC News, in Chicago, Illinois. Because radio technology was relatively primitive in the 1930s, radio broadcasts were either aired live or not at all. WLS reluctantly allowed Morrison to go to New Jersey to experiment with new recording technology that allowed audio reports to be aired at a later date.