LOS ANGELES – When the story broke that a little girl was trapped in a well in the L.A.-area city of San Marino, thousands of local residents snapped on their television sets. They kept them on for the next 27 hours.
The year was 1949 – decades before live coverage of car chases, hostage crises and other breaking news became commonplace.
“That was the first time anyone realized that television had this remarkable ability,” Stan Chambers, one of the two reporters on the scene for KTLA-TV’s unusual broadcast, recalled years later of his role in TV news history. “It was then that I decided that I really wanted to be in news.”
Chambers, who stayed on the story through its heartbreaking ending to become one of the most enduring and recognizable faces in Los Angeles television news, died Friday at his home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood, the station announced, without specifying the cause. He was 91.
Chambers’ more than six-decade career at KTLA spanned nearly the entire history of the pioneering Los Angeles TV station. When he retired in August 2010 – on his 87th birthday – he had covered more than 22,000 stories, the station said, including many of Southern California’s biggest news events.