Longtime Boston broadcaster Mary Richardson passes away

Longtime Boston broadcaster Mary Richardson has died, according to her former employer WCVB.

Richardson, 76, died of Alzheimer’s Disease. She last held an on-air job in 2010, wrapping up 30 years at Channel 5, most of them as a face of the station’s Chronicle program.

Her husband Stan Leven, a former senior producer for Chronicle, said in a statement, “Mary never let her Alzheimer’s define her or slow her down. She was as real as real could be, a force in motion and always gracious, stopping to talk to her fans. Our family came to accept that we share Mary, you can’t contain Mary.”

Richardson joined WCVB in 1980, after stints at a few TV stations out west. She worked as a reporter and anchor, as well as hosting the weekly public-affairs program “Five on Five.”

After four years, she moved to the role she’d hold for the next 26: as a co-anchor of Chronicle, the channel’s nightly newsmagazine show. For the program, which she anchored alongside Peter Mehegan and then Anthony Everett, she traveled around New England and across the globe.

She also co-hosted the annual Holiday at Pops! concert from Boston’s Symphony Hall as well as the popular Pops Goes the Fourth! celebration from the Hatch Shell on the banks of the Charles River. Both were broadcast locally and nationally.

In 2011, Richardson was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame for her decades of accomplishment in the media industry. She — as well as Chronicle during her time there — received numerous other awards for her work.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3pHE5kf