Springsteen Surprises NBC's Brian Williams At NJ Hall Induction

(PHOTO Credit: MSNBC.com)

NBC news anchor and New Jersey native Brian Williams got a big surprise Thursday evening when Bruce Springsteen showed up at the New Jersey Hall of Fame ceremonies to give Williams’ induction introduction speech, according to NJ.com.

Williams, who was born in North Jersey but grew up in Middletown, was one of a dozen people inducted into the state’s Hall of Fame in the 2014 class at the ceremony in Asbury Park.

The other inductees included former Gov. Jim Florio, farm-to-table chef Alice Waters, pioneering girl group The Shirelles, basketball great Patrick Ewing, and Howard Katz, the senior vice president of broadcasting and media operations for the NFL. Historical inductees are jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, writer Dorothy Parker, suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and 19th century labor leader Peter J. McGuire. Maud Dahme, a Holocaust survivor and longtime Holocaust educator, is being honored as an “unsung hero.” Actor James Gandolfini, best known for his role on “The Sopranos,” was inducted posthumously.

“To paraphrase a friend of mine, if Walter Cronkite and Jon Stewart had had a baby, and due to the ongoing controversy over same sex marriage, they had to abandon that baby on the New Jersey Turnpike, and it grew up to be a news anchor, it would be Brian Williams,” Springsteen said.

Williams quoted Springsteen’s music in his acceptance speech, talking of his youth growing up on the highways of the Jersey Shore with his pals, hitting Tradewinds and Club Spanky, ending the night at Jimmy Byrne’s Sea Girt Inn.

“There was a time, I admit, when I could not wait to get out of here,” Williams said, according to NJ.com, “and then years later, as you get older and mature and realize what’s important in life, I couldn’t wait to get back here.”