News > Woodruff Plans Return to ABC
October 20, 2006
Content taken from Zap 2 It:
ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, who was wounded in Iraq early this year, is ready to go back on the air.
Woodruff will anchor a prime-time special in the spring that will tell the story of what happened on Jan. 29, when he and cameraman Doug Vogt were wounded in a roadside bomb attack outside Baghdad. They were traveling with a U.S. Army patrol.
At the time, Woodruff was only a few weeks into his new job as co-anchor (with Elizabeth Vargas) of ABC's "World News Tonight." He suffered a head injury from shrapnel and several broken bones; Vogt also sustained a head injury, though his was not as severe as Woodruff's.
The anchor went through a long recovery period at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and over the summer started easing back into his professional life with trips to the ABC newsroom.
The prime-time special will include interviews with eyewitnesses and the medical personnel who treated Woodruff following the Jan. 29 attack, and Woodruff will also give a personal account of his recovery. ABC also says the documentary will "report on the heroic efforts of the military medical teams that have saved thousands of soldiers' lives, and on the stories of how those injured soldiers and their families bravely carry on."
Following the documentary, it's unclear how much work Woodruff will take on at ABC News. The network has since settled on Charles Gibson as the solo anchor of "World News"; Vargas, after taking a leave to give birth to her second child, is back as a co-anchor of "20/20."
Woodruff and his wife, Lee, also have a deal with publisher Random House to write a memoir about their experiences over the past nine months.
