76-year-old Aaron Brown, a former Seattle and CNN anchor, died on Sunday, according to several news outlets.
Brown began his career at KING 5 where he was a night assignment editor. He later became a reporter and anchor for the station.
He later moved to KIRO 7 where he anchored the 11 p.m. newscast.
Brown was probably best known for his coverage of 9/11 on CNN. It was his first day on the job when a plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York. The network quickly moved him to the roof of their building where a clear view of the Trade Center was available.
His calm delivery in a crisis was probably best punctuated with the phrase, “‘Good Lord. There are no words.’”
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Brown won the Edward R. Murrow Award for his 9/11 coverage.
Brown told CNN that he felt a profound sense of inadequacy when the second tower collapsed. “A million things had been running through my mind about what might happen … and it just never occurred to me that they would come down, and it’s the only time I thought, ‘maybe you just don’t have what it takes to do a story like this,’” Brown said.
That was a rare show of humility for a man who was known as very confident, sometimes drifiting into arrogance.
People across the country first took note of Brown when he became anchor of an overnight ABC News program.
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He finished his career as a professor at Arizona State University.
“He was a smart, terrific writer,” said KIRO Newsradio’s Matt Marokvich, who produced a TV magazine with Brown at KIRO 7. “He always wanted the best out of the people he worked with.”
“He had a biting sense of humor, and in the days before people spoke of a work-life balance, Aaron knew its value. Anchoring a program at 10 p.m. can be brutal, but Aaron was able to make time for what was important to him outside the studio, whether it be his wife and daughter or a round of golf,” former CNN producer Jon Auerbach said.
Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.
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