Former ‘Today’ News Anchor Lew Wood Dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lew Wood, a veteran broadcast journalist who covered the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy for CBS and later anchored the news report for NBC’s “Today” show, has died at age 84.

Wood’s daughter, Brigitte Wood, says her father died Wednesday at a hospice in Riverside County.

Wood began his career in radio in 1952 at WDZ-AM in Decatur, Ill.

He transitioned to TV the following year, working as a reporter-cameraman, and anchoring the evening news, for a fledgling TV station in South Bend, Ind.

As a correspondent for CBS in the 1960s, Wood covered the Civil Rights movement and was part of the news team in Dallas to report on Kennedy’s visit when the president was killed.

He became “Today’s” news anchor in 1975.