In the summer of 1955 my parents visited me at the Minnesota Boy Scout camp where I was a counselor. "We're moving to Yankton," they said. "You'll start the new school year there," my sophomore year.

I was at once happy and a little intimidated. Happy because I'd always liked Yankton during our many visits from Pickstown as I was growing up. The annual Shrine circus in Nash gym, the Yankton Junior High Relays, Terry games in Riverside park, the excellent medical facilities and, of course, WNAX, home to the famous Neighbor Lady, George B. German and the station that carried my two favorite newscasters, Edward R. Murrow of CBS and White Larson who did the 10 p.m. news from the Sioux City studios.

I was intimidated because Yankton was always one of the "big towns" in my formative years. In Pickstown we played 6-man football. The Bucks were a well-known 11-man powerhouse. There were just 80 students in Pickstown's entire high school. My new school would have 400. I wondered if I would get lost in the crowd.

In retrospect, it was one of the luckiest moves of my life. Yankton High School, with its excellent faculty, was a major move up for me. There were role models all around. In my three years at YHS two fellow students were given generous academic scholarships at Harvard. Two others were chosen for the U.S. Air Force Academy and West Point. A teammate was a highly recruited football player. Two of my classmates won highest honors at Girl's State.

Although I was new to the community, when I managed to do something notable, such as being elected Boy's State Governor, I was treated like a native son.

In fact, one of my strongest memories of Yankton, indeed, one of its enduring influences on my life, was the sense of family that the community embraced. Looking back, I realize that some of my friends had hard working parents who earned very small salaries. They were statistically poor but they were never labeled as such. They were judged by their accomplishments and their behavior, not their bank account. Moreover, main street merchants and local physicians quietly made sure no one went without essentials.

In a way, my own career began in Yankton. I worked for Hanny's Men Wear on Saturdays and holidays, for Bob Sherman on the river during the summer months and during my high school days I worked many nights on KYNT for Bill Johnson. It was then that I began to think I could make my living in broadcasting, a bold idea for a young man from the Great Plains.

Now, every election night, when I sit at my anchor desk, broadcasting to the nation the results of a Presidential contest, the balance of power in Congress or the results of a foreign election in, say, Moscow or South Africa, I almost always think back to 1956, when I raced around Yankton, picking up the precinct results and calling them in to KYNT.

From time to time I have returned to Yankton to report on the place of the community in my life and it's always a perilous exercise because invariably someone is offended or feels short-changed. In one report for the TODAY Show I talked about the camaraderie on main street, the place of churches in Yankton, the local colleges, the Missouri River - and the Ice House. Well, the outrage in some quarters over the mention of the Ice House was palpable.

For me, the strength of Yankton is the sum of all its parts. It's a culture with an enviable professional core and a working class body, at once sophisticated and muscular. Yankton began life as a rough little river town, the jumping off place for the ambitious and the adventurous. It's come a long way since those 19th century beginnings but that early role is part of its historic legacy and we should be proud of those origins.

One final note: that summer my parents visited to tell me we were moving to Yankton my tentmate was Eldon Eisenach, whose father taught at Yankton College. In his trombone case Eldon had a picture of a fellow debate team member. I thought to myself, "Well, I'll recognize two people in my new school - Eldon and the girl in the trombone case."

Her name was Meredith Auld.

We have been married 37 years this summer.

Yes, moving to Yankton was one of the big breaks of my very lucky life.