News anchor a longtime legend in Pittsburgh broadcasting
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
During his years as a producer at WTAE-TV news in the 1980s and 1990s, Stu Samuels had a piece of advice to new co-workers.
“The next time you hear a roar of thunder,” he’d tell them, “it may just be Adam Lynch.”
Mr. Lynch’s booming baritone and sober demeanor were a fixture of Pittsburgh broadcasting for 43 years. Mr. Lynch died Tuesday in San Antonio, Texas, where he lived with his daughter, Laura Kresek. He was 89.
A native of McKeesport, Mr. Lynch attended the University of Pittsburgh and would go on to be an on-camera reporter and anchor at all three major local network affiliates during a career that saw local broadcast news grow from its infancy to become a mainstay in people’s homes.
“He was the same wonderful guy you saw on TV in real life,” Ms. Kresek said. “He was adored.”
According to his family, Mr. Lynch had decided by age 10 that he wanted to be on the radio, and he practiced by reading the newspaper into a metal trash can so he could hear his voice echo back.
In 1951, he was hired as a summer-replacement announcer at WEDO Radio in McKeesport. A job offer in Weirton, W.Va., kept him from finishing his senior year at Pitt. He got television jobs in Lima, Ohio, and Cincinnati and then landed at KDKA — primarily as a classical-music announcer on its FM radio station. It was at KDKA that he changed his professional name from his given first name of Jared to his middle name, Adam, because there was a Pirates player at the time named Jerry Lynch.
He was a weatherman at KDKA starting in 1957. According to a 1994 Post-Gazette piece on Mr. Lynch’s retirement, “Two years later,” he recalled, “I was told I would be replaced by a meteorologist named Joe DeNardo.” Mr. DeNardo would go on to become a veritable legend himself.
After a stint in Providence, R.I., Mr. Lynch returned to Pittsburgh as an anchor at WIIC (now WPXI) in 1963 and stayed 16 years, until the station abruptly fired him. He joined WTAE in 1980, when it expanded to a one-hour 6 p.m. newscast.
“That man had the best pipes in the broadcast business and the intellect to match,” WTAE personality Sally Wiggin said of her colleague. “He was incomparable in so many ways. The breadth of his knowledge was astounding. His voice and his heart and his pen were always top notch.”
Mr. Lynch was an accomplished writer and avid historian, an aviation enthusiast and a military buff, but more than anything, she said, he brought a passion to his craft of journalism and reporting.
Mr. Samuels said he grew up watching Mr. Lynch, “then I worked with him. He was inspiring. He was the world’s oldest cub reporter. He wanted to know every detail. Every point of view. He’d get excited over stories that you’d think were mundane and he’d go out and come back with something new.”
“He was a wonderful storyteller,” Mr. Samuels said. “And that’s what made him such a good reporter. For a guy from McKeesport to get into as many homes as he did, that’s something.”
Mr. Lynch retired from the airwaves in 1993 but continued as a regular contributor to the Post-Gazette and to Pittsburgh Quarterly. He also continued as a journalism instructor at Penn State University’s satellite campus McKeesport. He was on the board of directors of the Vintage Grand Prix and the Pittsburgh Aero Club.
His wife of 60 years, Ellie, died in 2016.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, David, of Tulsa, Okla., and a granddaughter.
A memorial service will be announced at a later date.