Agnes Nixon

Nixon is the premier storyteller in the history of daytime television, and the creator of beloved soap operas such as "One Life to Live" and "All My Children." Raised in Nashville, as the only child of divorced parents in an Irish-Catholic enclave, she experienced more tears than joy. She felt isolated and painfully lonely because no child she knew had a father living apart from his family. Moreover, she was terrified of her dad's irrationality. Nixon never got over those feelings of inadequacy, and they provided her a writer's insight into the hidden emotions that so often shape people's destinies. In college at Northwestern, she won college competitions for writing and directing the best play, which led to her first job in radio just three days after graduation. Nixon was later hired to write for soap operas, such as "As the World Turns," "Search for Tomorrow," "Guiding Light," and "Another World." In 1968, she was recruited by ABC-TV and offered creative control of her own program. Tired of the restraint