Ron Stone, who anchored the news on KPRC TV for 20 years and was a Houston broadcasting legend, passed away from prostate cancer on Tuesday with his family by his side, KPRC Local 2 reported.
Stone, who turned 72 on April 6, spent more than 30 years on the air in Houston.
He was a daily fixture for KPRC viewers from 1972 until he retired in 1992 and formed a production company. Prior to that, Stone worked at KHOU TV for 10 years.
This comes as a shock to me - I did not know that Stone had been battling cancer.
I'm also pretty pretty bummed.
At the risk of sounding cheesy and cliché, a part of my childhood has literally died. This is because I grew up watching Ron Stone. His face and his voice were nightly fixtures in our household.
Younger people and recent transplants to Houston who have been exposed to the sensationalist claptrap that is KPRC's news programming today might not believe this, but back in the 70s and most of the 80s, Channel 2 actually had a decent local newscast. A big reason for that was Ron Stone. He anchored KPRC's five o'clock newscast along with weathercaster Doug Johnson and sportscaster Ron Franklin (who now works for ESPN) and also hosted KPRC's The Eyes of Texas program on Sundays. The Oklahoma native had a folksy, personable demeanor and a wry sense of humor but he nevertheless managed to report with a sense of earnest professionalism that seems to have all but disappeared from local TV news today. Stone was familiar and reassuring, even during times of crisis (Hurricane Alicia, 1983) or tragedy (Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, 1986). In addition to serving as a TV anchor, Stone was also an author, a documentary producer and, occassionally, a field reporter, filing stories from places like Lebanon and Berlin.
Growing up, I regarded Stone as something of a friendly authority figure; a familiar and trusted personality that appeared in our TV room every evening. His on-air persona was such that, even though I never met him, I felt like I knew him well.
And that's why, today, it honestly feels like somebody close to me has died.
Like Marvin Zindler, Ron Stone was a Houston TV icon that will never be replaced. The City of Houston is poorer for his loss.
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