Private Memorial Service To Be Held Tuesday For CBS '60 Minutes' Correspondent Bob Simon
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A private memorial service will be held Tuesday for veteran CBS News and "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon.
The memorial service will be held at the Metropolitan Opera House, and is intended for family members and close friends.
A larger public service will be held at a later date.
Around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, Simon, 73, was in a Lincoln Town Car headed south when it careened out of control on the West Side Highway near 30th Street, police said.
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The NYPD said Simon suffered fatal injuries when he was violently thrown from the back seat to the front of the car, CBS2's Sonia Rincon reported.
Simon had a career that spanned more than 50 years, surviving close calls in dozens of dangerous conflicts overseas. The Bronx-born globetrotter joined CBS News in 1967 and soon became a foreign correspondent.
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His foreign coverage has appeared on all CBS News broadcasts and has earned him other major awards — including the Overseas Press Club's highest honor for a body of work, the President's Award. His 27 Emmys may be the most held by a journalist for field reporting, CBS News reported.
His career in war reporting began in Vietnam. He was based in London from 1972 to 1977 and in Saigon from 1971 to 1972 and won an Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting on the 1972 spring offensive in Hanoi.
During the opening days of the first Gulf war in 1991, Simon and three other members of his CBS News crew were taken prisoner by the Iraqi military and held in Iraqi prisons for 40 days.
Simon received numerous awards for his reporting. His 2012 story from Central Africa on the world's only all-black symphony won him his fourth Peabody award and an Emmy, CBS News recalled. A 2013 story about an orchestra in Paraguay, one whose poor members constructed their instruments from trash, won him his 27th Emmy.
Simon won electronic journalism's highest honor, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, for "Shame of Srebrenica," a report on the old "60 Minutes II" program on heinous acts of genocide during the Bosnian War.
He is survived by his wife, Françoise, and their daughter, Tanya, who is a producer for "60 Minutes" in New York. He adored his grandson, Jack, and was expecting another grandchild -- daughter Tanya is six months pregnant.
At the time of his death, he was working with his daughter on a report about the search for a cure for Ebola.
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