NEW ORLEANS, La. — A longtime, popular anchor at a New Orleans television station was killed Friday in a small plane crash, along with the pilot, her employer WVUE, a CNN affiliate, reported.
Nancy Parker was shooting a story in a stunt plane when the crash happened in a field near the New Orleans Lakefront Airport.
“Nancy was a part of the Fox 8 family for the last 23 years. She put her heart and soul into her work, covering thousands of stories and touching countless lives,” Vice President and General Manager Tim Ingram said. “She made a difference in the lives of those she reported on. She will be sorely missed, and her absence creates a void that cannot be filled.”
Parker, 53, is survived by her husband and three children, according to the station. She and the pilot were pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities have not provided information on the pilot’s identity.
Parker’s husband, Glynn Boyd, wrote Saturday on Facebook that the “dearest and most wonderful person in my life is gone.”
“Our Nancy was an amazing human being,” Boyd, a former television journalist, wrote. “I was so proud of her; first as an awesome mother of our three children, just incredible. She loved them so much. This is why this is so difficult to comprehend. And she was a true professional, a master of her craft. She had so much to give.”
In the post with a photo of Parker he added, “So smart, so talented, she was my everything.. I just don’t know. I really don’t. No man, but God could’ve taken Nancy from my arms. I loved her and she loved me. We were best friends. I would trade places with her right now. I should’ve been on that plane. She was our road map, our compass, our guiding light. I’m lost without my wife.”
New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson said Parker was an outstanding anchor and a leader in local television.
“(Parker) fostered great trust with both those who she covered and with her viewers,” Benson said.
The city’s police department said it shared the same mission as Parker: to make New Orleans a better place to live, work and visit.
“A true lover of New Orleans — and New Orleans truly loved her back,” the department wrote on Facebook.
Parker was from Alabama and began anchoring the news on radio when she was a high school senior, according to WVUE. She worked briefly in the press office of a US congressman before beginning her television career in 1989 in Columbus, Georgia.
She made a short stop in Montgomery, Alabama, before landing a job in 1990 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She stayed there until 1996, when she joined WVUE as a weekend anchor.
