Over the years I have written numerous Absent Friends posts about Pittsburgh area television, radio, and media personalities. People like Bill Cardille, Adam Lynch, Eleanor Schano, and Ricki Wirtz. These names meant little to anyone outside of southwestern Pennsylvania, but they were very much a part of the fabric of the Pittsburgh area community and culture. There are people like this in every community, every big city.
Such a person was Wendy Rieger who died on Friday at the age of 65. Wendy was a news anchor and reporter for the NBC television station in Washington DC for the last thirty years. Now I never once saw Wendy Rieger do her thing for NBC4 in Washington, but she was a frequent guest on Tony Kornheiser's radio show and podcast. She was loud and bombastic and funny as she told stories of reporting the news, her adventures, or misadventures, as a middle aged woman on the dating scene, of the dream house that she was designing and building in the Virginia countryside. Tony often called her his favorite guest, and I came to look forward to her appearances on the show.
Wendy encountered health difficulties in recent years. Heart surgery two years ago, and then glioblastoma, a brain tumor, that caused her to retire last year. Earlier in the week, word came down that she had entered into hospice treatment, and then the news of her death arrived Friday.
Like I said, I have no first hand experience of watching Wendy Rieger at work, but I came to know her as one of those types of persons who exist in every community, and as someone who becomes a vital part of the lives of the people who live there, almost like a member of the family. If you google "Wendy Rieger", you will find many tributes to her from her colleagues in the DC television community, and you will get to see some small samplings of her work. If you do that, I think that you will "get" what I am talking about.
RIP Wendy Rieger.
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