WBZ reporter Jones was full of passion, life
‘We have lost a great voice in Boston’
Chances are, if there was a big story breaking, veteran WBZ news radio reporter Lana Jones was there. She was a passionate, hardworking, talented reporter.
But to her husband, Steve JonesD’Agostino, she was the love of his life. The couple were to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary in September. She died unexpectedly yesterday at age 62.
“She was highly dedicated to serving her listeners,” JonesD’Agostino told me. “She got a great amount of joy from doing that.”
Before Jones left for work on Tuesday, Jones-D’Agostino helped carry her equipment to her car. They hugged and kissed goodbye, he told me, and she seemed like her healthy and usual full-of-life self.
Jones’ last assignment was covering the wake of another WBZAM (1030) legend, Gil Santos, who died last week on his 80th birthday.
On the way home, Jones felt ill and went to bed. When JonesD’Agostino woke up at 5 a.m. yesterday, his wife was lying on the floor. He called an ambulance. On the way to UMass Medical Center, Jones suffered a heart attack followed by a second one in the ER.
An image scan showed a burst aorta that was irreparable, her husband said. She was pronounced dead shortly after 7 a.m.
When she wasn’t working, Jones and her husband loved to travel. They went to Costa Rica in February, where they rode horses on the beach and had dinners at sunset.
“The longer we were married, the more strong and deeper our love became,” Jones-D’Agostino said.
News of her death left the WBZ newsroom in shock and tears. Condolences from politicians, listeners and Boston media folks poured in.
“Lana Jones was a kind, wonderful person and reporter,” tweeted Mayor Marty Walsh. “We have lost a great voice in Boston — Lana, you will be truly missed.”
Longtime WBZ colleague Carl Stevens recalled Jones driving to Manhattan to cover the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and reporting for hours in the rain at last week’s Boston Marathon.
“She had tremendous strength, tremendous knowledge, tremendous intelligence,” Stevens said, “but I think the thing that most people will tell you about Lana is her kindness.”
The Ohio native landed at WBZ in 1991 and was part of the station’s award-winning coverage of the priest sex abuse scandal, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crash and the Worcester warehouse fire.
“Throw her into 50 pages of a court decision, or an appeal, or a trial, or the Whitey Bulger case, or the priest abuse case, any of those, and she was happy as could be,” said former WBZ radio news director Peter Casey. “She loved digging into the nitty-gritty of things and making sense out of it and making a story out of it.”
When reporter Kim Tunnicliffe came to WBZ two decades ago, Jones taught her the ropes. “She was a great teacher, a great mentor,” said Tunnicliffe. “It’s just so hard to picture that she’s just not going to be there anymore.”