Hunton Downs was born in Baltimore, MD and was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he helped open the first radio studios there while editing the college newspaper. In WWII, he served on General Brady's personal staff as well as on the staff of General David Sarnoff (founder of NBC), winning numerous citations from the War Department. As a post-war journalist, he received the prestigious Edward R. Murrow citation for his Berlin Cold War coverage and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam.