Monday, August 13, 2012

Goertzen Passing Devastates City

When someone is on TV for decades, they can seem almost like part of your family and that couldn't be more true than with Kathi Goertzen. Goertzen co-anchored the KOMO evening new for the better part of 30 years, her pairing with Dan Lewis was one of the longest running news teams west of the Mississippi.
Kathi was a classmate of mine at Washington State University although I really didn't meet her until years after we graduated.  I asked if she remembered me, she said I looked familiar.  We lived in the same dorm in our freshman year. She was in the Com. Department and so was I.  We didn't have any classes together and we where always going in different directions when I saw her.
But one thing for sure is that I was proud of her.  In a time when local news anchors seemed to be just pretty faces, she brought a real articulate, thinking dimension to the evening news.
When her fight began with her brain tumor, she brought her viewers along, sharing her deepest feelings, because as much as her viewers thought of her as a member of the family, she must have had many of the same feelings about them.
Kathi is gone now and a city that only two years ago was devastated by the passing of another longtime broadcaster Dave Niehaus is now in mourning again.

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