Long after he became a household name in journalism, Bill Moyers often found quiet company in Morristown’s Burnham Park, seated beside the bronze likeness of Thomas Paine.
To Moyers, Paine wasn’t just a revolutionary thinker—he was America’s first journalist. There, in the shadow of that statue, Moyers would read and reread his dog-eared copy of Common Sense, reflecting on what he called “the impact of the written word.”
Moyers, who died last month at age 91, was a PBS icon, author, adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, deputy director of the Peace Corps, newspaper publisher, and an ordained minister who firmly believed in the separation of church and state.