Mar 2, 2018 3 min read

My first job interview out of college was for a reporting position at a television station in Wilkes-Barre. The news director asked me a question for which I had not prepared.

“What Pittsburgh newsperson do you admire?”

I paged through faces in my mind, and said it.

“Adam Lynch.”

The news director nodded her head in agreement. Adam was the best. I was sure I’d gotten the job.

I did not. But I got something better. A few years later, I landed a job on an anchor desk in Pittsburgh at WTAE-TV, in a seat right next to Adam Lynch. He would be my co-anchor on weekends for several years.

Adam died yesterday. He was 89 and had been living with his daughter in San Antonio. I knew he had been in decline, but the news is still so sad.

Adam was one of my favorite people: well-read, quick to laugh, intellectually curious, precise, and devoted to facts. Adam adored his tall, vivacious wife, Ellie, his daughter and son, and his granddaughter, Lindsay, whom he called “Binzer.” I can still see him standing near my desk in the newsroom, telling me with great, breathless joy how the little girl had mastered rollerblading.

Adam loved fishing and airplanes and beer. He was a handsome man with a barrel chest from which sprang that booming voice. That voice alone would have bestowed credibility for a journalist, but Adam backed it up with a work ethic and a zest for reporting that earned him the moniker “the oldest cub reporter in town.”

You’ll read a lot about Adam in the next several days, as his colleagues remember his contributions to Pittsburgh television. But I’ll remember him as my friend.

The job of anchoring a newscast has a lot of down time. During taped stories and commercials, Adam and I would talk about all sorts of things. Fly fishing comes to mind now.

He called me Bethie. I was 30 years his junior, but he met my every inane thought or naïve comment with that same twinkle in his eye. He read and raved about “A River Runs Through It” before it was a Brad Pitt movie. I came across the film on TV the other day, and smiled thinking of my friend.

When my son was about 3, I took him to visit Adam and Ellie at their home. My son loved trains, and Adam spent a long time with him, talking and talking about trains.

In recent years, we exchanged occasional letters. He penned articles about aircraft history and would share them with me. Maybe 10 years ago, I hosted him and Ellie for dinner and set off the smoke alarms from overcooking the steak. The meal was a disaster.

As he left, I apologized.

“Terrible, yes,” he said in that sonorous bass. And then, “Ah, Bethie. How I love you.”

There are people we feel better knowing are still in the world, people whose death somehow diminishes us. That’s how it is with Adam – for me and for all those television people who knew him.

Adam was the best partner I could have asked for. He was at once the silliest human being and the most profound.

What a voice. What a journalist. What a life. What a dear man.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.