Jessica Savitch

 

Jessica Beth Savitch was a well-known American television broadcaster and news reporter, host of PBS' Frontline and the weekend anchor of NBC Nightly News during the short-lived Roger Mudd/Tom Brokaw era. Jessica was born in Pennsylvania and attended Ithaca College in New York where she worked at the campus radio and TV stations. After graduation she worked at various radio and TV stations in Philadelphia and New York. She then became a popular local television newscaster at KYW, the former NBC affiliate in Philly, and a Washington correspondent for NBC News. Thanks to her screen presence and attractive style, she was eventually promoted to the news anchor of the weekend NBC Nightly News, and she also anchored Frontline on PBS. Her autobiography, Anchorwoman, was published in 1982. As her career skyrocketed her unstable personal life became increasingly messy. She had a stormy on-again, off-again ten year relationship with news director Ron Kershaw, who was allegedly abusive. She also suffered two failed marriages and a miscarriage. She was suspected of abusing drugs and a slurred performance on a 1983 News Digest seemed to confirm this suspicion. On Sunday, October 23, 1983, Savitch had dinner with Martin Fischbein, vice-president fo the New York Post, in New Hope, PA. After dinner they began to drive home with Fischbein behind the wheel and Jessica in the back with her dog. Fischbein may have missed posted warning signs in a heavy rainfall and he drove out of the wrong exit from the restaurant and up the towpath of the old Pennsylvania Canal's Delaware Division on the PA side of the Delaware River. The car veered to far to the left side and went over the edge into the shallow water of the canal. After falling approximately fifteen feet and landing upside down, the staion wagon sank into deep mud which sealed the doors shut. They both died of drowning as the water poured in. Jessica's life was the subject of a Lifetime Television made-for-TV movie starring Sela Ward called Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story. One of her legacies is that she was the first woman to ever anchor a prime-time news program.