R.I.P.: Bill Shields, Former WBZ-TV Storyteller

(1953-2033)

As an Emmy Award-winning reporter for WBZ-TV, Bill Shields reported from high atop Mount Washington in winter and from the ocean depths off Florida with treasure hunters — and stood in front of cameras during more storms than he’d care to count, according to The Boston Globe.

For many viewers, though, the most memorable moments of his 41 years on WBZ aired during the past decade, after his first diagnosis with lung cancer, when he encouraged others to seek treatment and survive with the optimism and humor for which he was known.

“I don’t call myself a journalist,” he said in an interview last fall with Upstage Lung Cancer, which raises awareness and funding for lung cancer research, after he had been treated for a second cancer diagnosis. “I call myself a storyteller.”

Shields, whose most resonant story was how he used laughter and good cheer to help extend his life after his diagnosis, was 70 when he died Friday in hospice care in his Marshfield home.

“I’m lucky,” he joked during the Upstage Lung Cancer interview, before receiving the organization’s Fan Award for speaking out publicly about his diagnosis and treatment. “How many people can say they’ve got two different kinds of lung cancer?”

Mr. Shields credited the care he received at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with sending into remission the lung cancer he had been diagnosed with in 2013.