Jim Vance

Jim Vance (born January 11, 1942^[1] in Ardmore, Pennsylvania) is an American television news anchor in Washington DC.

Early Live And Career

Vance grew up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a mostly Anglo suburb west of Philadelphia. The patriarch of the family was his paternal grandfather, who supported his 16 children as a plumber. Vance’s father James Jr fought in World War II and was traumatized by combat and became an alcoholic. He died at 38 from cirrhosis of the liver when his only child Jim was 9. soon after his mother Eleanor left Jim with her in laws while she went to work in Philadelphia.

Vance wanted to be a plumber like “Pop” his grandfather, but his family urged him to go to college. At Cheyney State College, a historically black school outside Philadelphia, he studied to become a teacher. He earned Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary Education from Cheyney University in Cheyney, Pennsylvania. Vance taught English for three years in a Philadelphia junior high before making the leap to television.

Career

Vance currently anchors the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. editions of News4 on WRC-TV in Washington, DC. He has worked for WRC-TV since 1969, and in 1972, he became the station's main co-anchor, as one of the first African Americans to serve in this position at any American television station. Between 1972 and 1976, he worked as co-anchor with Glenn Rinker at WRC-TV-4. Between 1976 and 1980, Vance co-anchored with Sue Simmons, a pairing that resulted in one of the first, if not the first, African-American co-anchors of a major market newscast. Since 1989, he has been part of currently the longest-running anchor team in Washington, alongside co-anchor and health reporter Doreen Gentzler. He is famous on the Internet for appearing in a video with the late sports anchor George Michael where they laughed at a model who fell twice on a runway.

He had an extremely brief cameo as himself in the 2009 movie State of Play. He also appeared as himself in the 2010 NBC TV show The Event and the 2013 NBC TV show The Blacklist.

Awards and honors

Vance has earned 19 Emmys and has been inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. He has also been named Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine in 1976.^[2]

Personal

Vance lives in Spring Valley, Washington, D.C.. He was married briefly for 10 months when he was 19 and has daughter Dawn from that marriage. A second marriage also ended in divorce in the mid 1980s. In 1987 he married his third wife, former WRC-TV journalist and former WHUT journalist Kathy McCampbell Vance^[3] As of July 2014 they are estranged.^[4] His other two children are daughter Amani(1972) and son Brendon(1976). He has one grandson.^[5]

Vance battled a cocaine addiction in the late 1970s and early ’80s, later going public with the ordeal ^[2][3] He checked into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1984.^[3] In 2014, Vance revealed he was beaten by his mother as a child and advocated against that form of discipline.^[6]

References

External links

• Jim Vance bio at nbcwashington.com