Longtime ABC and CBS Anchor Dies in Hospice Care: Tom McGee Was 78

Former ABC and CBS broadcaster Tom McGee has died. He was 78.

His wife, Julianne, announced that he passed away in a Huntington, West Virginia, hospice home on Sunday, July 20.

McGee was born in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1947, and eventually ended up attending the University of Alabama. He served in the Vietnam War for one year before returning to school and finishing his degree.

The broadcaster worked at CNN, then the Charleston, West Virginia, ABC/FOX affiliate station WCHS-TV in 1984, then left for Charleston’s CBS station WOWK-TV. He then returned to WCHS in the early 2000s.

Later on in life, he made a drastic career jump from TV host to lawyer. McGee went to law school in his 60s and eventually became a personal injury attorney in the state of West Virginia for the law firm Mark Hunt & Associates.

McGee, who was charged with DUI three times early in his career, often took on DUI cases to help people with events similar to what he went through.

“It took a lot of whipping for me to understand what was going on. Some overnight visits to the regional jail is enough to know that’s not a place you want to be,” he said in a 2013 interview.

Former Charleston mayor Danny Jones praised McGee for his community work in a statement to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, saying he was “an enormous talent and a generously warm individual.”