Posted: June 27, 2008

Jim Lehrer returned to the NewsHour anchor chair on Thursday, June 26, for the first time since undergoing a successful heart valve procedure in late April. Lehrer plans to anchor the broadcast two or three days a week as he moves toward a full time schedule.

Beyond resuming his anchor duties at the NewsHour, Lehrer will head up PBS' live, primetime, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions this summer.

Jim had the following message for viewers at the end of the June 26 broadcast:

MP3: Listen to Jim Lehrer's Message to Viewers on Thursday, June 26

"Before we go tonight, a few personal words, if I may. Mostly, there are just two words: Thank you.

Thank you for the messages of concern and encouragement the last two months. I wanted to respond personally to each, but there were just too many, thousands of them, and still counting. I read every one of them. They mattered very much to me.

There is no mystery about what happened. The aortic valve in my heart went bad and it was replaced, skillfully and perfectly. I will be easing back to work a couple or so days a week at a time, so please don't think anything's gone wrong again when I turn up missing.

For the record, one of my doctors said a valve procedure like mine is known to make a person feel and act 10 years younger, so stay tuned."