ST. LOUIS — Longtime St. Louis news anchor Dick Ford has died at the age of 88.
Ford’s journalism career began in 1951 in his hometown of Pittsburgh. He worked for KMOX-TV in 1965 and then started working at KSD-TV in 1969.
He was a part of the very successful “Newsbeat” program with John Auble and told 5 On Your Side’s Kay Quinn last December:
"I'm 88 years old now. I've been retired for 16 years and people still when I run into people, they still want to talk about the Newsbeat program, the magazine program I did with the late John Auble. It went off the air in 1982, but people still talk to me about it and it rang a bell and the program was enormously successful."
He went on to anchor local newscasts at 5, 6 and 10, teaming with Karen Foss, Deanne Lane, Mike Bush and Bob Richards to ratings success. At one time, KSDK-TV’s newscasts had the highest local ratings in the country.
Dick Ford left KSDK in 1992 and spent the rest of his career anchoring the news at KTVI.
He was 88 years old.
Ford will be cremated and a memorial mass will be celebrated on Sept. 7 at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church at 7148 Forsyth Boulevard in University City.
