R.I.P.: Loyd Dobyns Jr., Retired NBC Correspondent

Lloyd Dobyns, Linda Ellerbee

Lloyd Dobyns Jr., an award-winning NBC News correspondent who reported from places around the world and who anchored an innovative U.S. television newscast in the early 1980s, has died, his family said. 

He was 85, reports The Associated Press.

Ken Dobyns said in a statement that his father died Sunday in Mebane, North Carolina, northwest of Raleigh. He said his father suffered complications from a series of strokes.

Dobyns worked for NBC News in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and was known in the U.S. for working with Linda Ellerbee on the late-night news series “NBC News Overnight” in 1982 and 1983.

“He was a friend, teacher, trouble-maker, and a world-class journalist,” Ellerbee said in the statement. “I shall miss him more than I can say.”

Dobyns was born in Newport News, Virginia, on March 12, 1936. After serving in the U.S. Army, he began his broadcasting career as a reporter for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1957. Three years later, he became a news anchor at WAVY-TV, the NBC affiliate in Virginia’s Tidewater area, and advanced to news director, the family statement said.

In 1969, Dobyns left Virginia for New York, where he first became managing editor of WNEW-TV, then as part of the NBC News team. He worked as a foreign correspondent before returning to New York to anchor the TV news magazine Weekend, winning a prestigious Peabody Award in 1975.

Dobyns won more than two-dozen awards for reporting, writing, and anchoring while with NBC News. He retired in 1986.