“60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon died Wednesday in a car accident in New York City, CBS News reported. He was 73.
Simon’s career in news spanned some 50 years and earned him countless awards.
“Bob was, and I’ll tell you it’s very hard to talk about him in the past tense, but Bob was for the last five decades, simply one of the best, in my opinion … at getting a story, telling a story, writing a story and making it simply unforgettable,” said CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who worked with Simon at “60 Minutes.”
By the time officers arrived at the scene of the accident, Simon — seated in the rear of a Lincoln Town Car — was unconscious and unresponsive, with injuries to his head and torso, according to the NYPD. He was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The vehicle’s injured driver was listed in stable condition. The Town Car collided with another vehicle at a red light, police said, and then struck a stanchion dividing traffic.
Simon joined CBS in 1967 as a reporter and editor based in New York. He went on to report from all over the world.
Simon covered the war in Vietnam and was on one of the last helicopters out of Saigon, according to his CBS News biography.
In 1991, he was captured by Iraqi forces at the start of the Gulf War. Simon and three colleagues spent 40 days in prison, an experience he later wrote about in his book “Forty Days.”
Among his many awards are four Peabodys, 27 Emmys and the Overseas Press Club’s highest honor for a body of work, the biography read.
Simon and his wife, Françoise, have one daughter, who is a producer for “60 Minutes.”
“He was a warrior-poet who loved life and loved people,” said Cooper.
He added: “I gotta say just on a personal basis, I grew up admiring Bob Simon, and whenever I gave talks at schools I’d always say Bob Simon is the greatest writer and the person I most look up at (in) this business. And when I started working at ’60 Minutes,’ to even be in the same halls, the same offices as Bob Simon, was such an honor, and it’s just a huge loss for CBS and for everybody.”