Barbara Hoctor Lynch, a former broadcast journalist who hosted NPR’s All Issues Thought of in its early days, died earlier this month. She was 77.
Hoctor Lynch died after a battle with most cancers on Sept. 18 at a rehab facility in Somers, N.Y., the place she spent her ultimate days receiving care, her brother Chris Hoctor advised NPR. She was identified with an aggressive most cancers this summer season that had unfold to her colon and liver.
Barbara Hoctor Lynch, proper, is pictured cohosting All Issues Thought of with Noah Adams at a studio in a former NPR constructing in Washington, D.C., in the course of the Nineteen Seventies. Artwork Silverman disguise caption
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Artwork Silverman
Barbara Hoctor Lynch, proper, is pictured cohosting All Issues Thought of with Noah Adams at a studio in a former NPR constructing in Washington, D.C., in the course of the Nineteen Seventies.
Artwork Silverman
“My household known as her an everlasting optimist,” he stated. “At the same time as she was terminally unwell, she would at all times attempt to care about others like me [and] name me on the telephone within the hospital and say, ‘How are you, what are you doing at this time?’ “
Hoctor Lynch landed at NPR within the late Nineteen Seventies, when she was employed to host the weekend broadcast of the community’s first information program, All Issues Thought of. In November 1979, she debuted the primary top-of-the-day information present Morning Version alongside co-host Bob Edwards. As host, Hoctor Lynch coated a variety of present occasions, such because the Carter administration in the course of the Iran hostage disaster and the 1980 presidential election.
NPR’s CEO John Lansing prolonged sympathies to Hoctor Lynch’s household in a press release on Friday.
“Hoctor and co-host Bob Edwards have been on the forefront of the information program that might carry a brand new fashion of storytelling to the early-drive-time airwaves and develop to turn into probably the most listened-to information radio program within the nation,” Lansing stated.
Hear Barbara Hoctor co-host Morning Version on Dec. 31, 1979
In an period when few girls held front-facing positions in journalism, Hoctor Lynch counted herself amongst a pioneering class of broadcast stars that included Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer and Judy Woodruff.
She was a job mannequin to many youthful girls, her brother Chris stated, together with her nieces and cousins.
“Individuals wished to be like Barbara,” he stated. “She was very heat and caring about others and very smart.”
She left NPR shortly after Morning Version was up-and-running and targeted on elevating her new child son, stated Chris, Hoctor Lynch’s youngest brother. She was beforehand married to former CBS Information anchor Invoice Lynch, an award-winning journalist who died earlier this 12 months, and stored his final title — besides on air, when she glided by Barbara Hoctor.
“Barbara did not speak loads an excessive amount of about her broadcasting profession, however she was very pleased with it and he or she cherished what she did,” Chris stated.
Earlier than coming to NPR, Hoctor Lynch hosted NBC’s Information and Info Service, the broadcaster’s try at an all-news radio format, from New York’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza till this system shut down in 1977.
Born within the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, Hoctor Lynch attended Roosevelt Excessive College in Yonkers, the place she did cheerleading and graduated with honors. She additionally attended Barbizon modeling and performing faculty in New York and went on to work as an additional in a few movies. Her sole performing credit score, based on IMDB, is for her position as a cheerleader on The Patty Duke Present, which her brother Richard Hoctor stated she landed by way of a pal who produced the present. In 1968, Hoctor Lynch graduated from Syracuse College, the place she studied communications, Chris stated.
Straight out of faculty, she taught English to highschool college students in Westchester, N.Y. In the meantime, on nights and weekends, she began working at a neighborhood radio station.
Hoctor Lynch spent her later years in Westchester. She is survived by her solely son, Patrick, and her brothers, Chris, John and Richard.
