DALLAS — Former WFAA anchor and reporter John Criswell, who was responsible for creating a number of segments that still air on the station to this day, has died at 83 years old.
Criswell anchored various weekday shows for WFAA for 17 years between 1973 and 1990 before leaving for KDFW, where he anchored for another seven years.
During his time at WFAA, Criswell at some point anchored nearly every broadcast on the station -- morning shows, weekend shows and, for the longest stretch, weekday newscasts at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.
He also originated a number of noteworthy features that became touchstones at the station, including the popular Crimestoppers and Wednesday's Child, the latter of which still airs weekly on the channel.
Criswell also covered a number of major stories during his time at WFAA, including serving as an anchor for a Democratic and a Republican National Convention alike, working various elections and inaugurations, reporting on multiple hurricanes and being an integral part of the station's wall-to-wall coverage of the Delta 191 crash at DFW Airport in August 1985.
His longtime friend, colleague and co-anchor Tracy Rowlett described Criswell was a class act.
"I think he covered just about every newscast that we had at Channel 8 at that time -- from morning to evening," Rowlett said Thursday. "But he finally made his mark by being the first person to anchor the Wednesday's Child segment. I think what he did to help children find homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and elsewhere is probably his legacy."
Prior to his time at WFAA, Criswell spent eight years working as an anchor and reporter for WMAL in Washington, D.C. After his time at WFAA, he served as a senior anchor at KDFW, where he anchored multiple weekday newscasts until 1997. He would later go on to become the CEO of "The Voice You've Always Wanted," which provided voice acting for commercial and nonprofit organizations for ebooks, documentaries, commercials and other forms of narrations.
"In his 17 years at our station, John served as an important voice for both WFAA and the Dallas-Fort Worth metro as a whole," WFAA vice president and station manager Carolyn Mungo said in a statement. "His legacy still lives on at the station today through the features he helped launch, such as the still-weekly Wednesday’s Child segment. He was a valuable part of the WFAA story, and he will be missed."