Scott Simon

Scott Simon (born March 16, 1952)^[1][2] is an American journalist and the host of Weekend Edition Saturday on National Public Radio. He also guest-hosts Need to Know (PBS). In 2013, Scott received a great deal of positive attention^[3] when he started tweeting from his mother's deathbed.^[4]

Life and career

Simon was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of comedian Ernie Simon and actress Patricia Lyons,^[5][6][7] and brother to a sister who died at a young age.^[8] He grew up in major cities across the United States and Canada, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.^[6] After his father died, his mother married Ralph G. Newman, a former minor league baseball player and American Civil War scholar and author who ran the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop in Chicago.^[9][10]

Simon's first book, Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan, was published in the spring of 2000, and his second, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was published in 2002. Simon has written a book – Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption – about his family's experiences. He is also the author of two novels: Pretty Birds (2005) and Windy City: A Novel of Politics (2008).

Simon has hosted BBC World News America, filling in for Matt Frei.[Authentication required.] In 1992-1993, Simon was the anchor of NBC's Weekend Today.

In May 2010, Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Willamette University where he was the keynote speaker for that year's commencement exercises.^[11]

After September 11, 2001, Simon spoke and wrote in support of the "war on terror." Simon wrote an op-ed for the October 11, 2001 Wall Street Journal, "Even Pacifists Must Support This War."^[12] Simon questioned nonviolence at greater length in the Quaker publication Friends Journal in December 2001, provoking many angry letters, to which Simon replied in the May 2003 edition.

Family

Simon met French documentary filmmaker Caroline Richard during an NPR interview in 2000. They married September 10, 2000, in a mixed faith (Methodist, Quaker, and Jewish) service in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at the home of fashion designer Alexander Julian.^[1] They have two daughters, both adopted as babies from China; the first, Elise, in 2004,^[13][14][15] and the second, Lina, in 2007.^[16] They consider themselves a Jewish family (Simon's father was Jewish and his mother was of Irish Catholic background).^[14][17] Simon and his wife were contacted by police as part of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning. The family was staying at a hotel near the restaurant at the center of the poisoning incident, and had twice bought food there for their young daughter. The health of the family was not affected.^[18]

References

External links

• NPR Biography on Scott Simon
• Weekend Edition Saturday
• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Scott Simon from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Scott Simon's official website