DC Radio Voices Continue to Share Memories of Chris Barnes

Kevin Patrick Allen shared this with DCRTV…..My expectation was that whatever health issue he was facing, he’d bounce back again. We worked together at All News 99.1. He’d be wrapping up his last hour or two of anchoring the overnight news as I headed toward the first assignment. There are few people that maintain a jovial, conversational tone while anchoring those hours. He’d interact with the traffic reporters and chuckle as he shared feature stories as if a buddy was in the room with him. What listeners didn’t know was that after he finished the shift, he wasn’t headed home to rest, he was headed home to anchor newscasts via his remote studio for two or three other stations around the country. He was a workhorse and a talented, jovial one at that. 

My deeply held belief as a reporter has long been that you don’t understand a story until you go to the scene. Inertia is natural. It’s human to assume “You already know what happened… why go to the scene? What do you think you’re going to find?” The answer is that you actually don’t know what you’ll find. You can’t assess something that hasn’t yet become real to you. That’s what I’m reminding myself about Barnes’s struggles in recent years. We were separated by hundreds of miles. I can’t tell you his story because I wasn’t inside it. So, I’ll remember that he was a hard working, upbeat friend and colleague who spoke glowingly first of his son, then his resilient mom and also his ex-wife who he admired for continuing to care about him after their marriage was done.

He’s not struggling anymore. My thoughts are with his adult son. He was “on the scene.” He undoubtedly knows the full story. I pray he knows his dad spoke of him often and clearly loved him. Go live a full, healthy life.