Stephen Barrett "Steve" Delaney

1938 - 2019

Steve Delaney - longtime NBC News correspondent - had a voice that carried authority, facts, color from the scene, insight and, above all, carefully crafted words that captured it all. It was silenced at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 3, in Charlotte, NC, after a valiant struggle with overwhelming health issues.

He took television viewers to Kent State, the Attica prison riots and the Challenger space explosion that claimed the life of a teacher and a NASA crew before millions of viewers and then he helped America understand what had happened. In the mid-70s, he was based in Israel and later Greece covering the tensions in the Middle East from both sides.

Steve covered politics in Washington DC and the political campaigns of George H. W. Bush, John Glenn, Howard Baker, and Walter Mondale.

His family included a son Sean and a daughter Megan, from his 45-year marriage with Lynn, and two sons Barry and Houston, and daughters Annie and Beth from an earlier marriage. Steve is also survived by eleven grandchildren, and his brothers John, Peter and David and sister Mary Gallien, and many in-laws, and nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his parents and his sister Cynthia Mitchell.

Stephen Barrett Delaney was born August 30, 1938, in Dobbs Ferry, New York, the son of Elizabeth Barrett and John Joseph Delaney, Jr. His naval officer dad and the family lived in Hawaii in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. After WWII, the family lived in Virginia and Illinois before settling in Charlotte, NC. He attended Charlotte Catholic and in 1960 graduated from Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, NC. Steve started his career in radio, at first as a disc jockey at WCGC in Belmont, and then at WSOC Radio and WSOC's television news department. In the late sixties, he was hired by the NBC owned and operated station WKYC in Cleveland, before moving to Atlanta, GA where NBC opened a southeast bureau.

Steve was proud of his 50-year career as a reporter. He wrote a commentary at the end of last year which included the following, "We journalists are not the enemy of the people. We ARE the people."

A Celebration of Life for Steve Delaney will be held In Milton, Vermont on Saturday, July 27, 2019. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to your favorite charity.

Arrangements are in the care of Kenneth Poe Funeral & Cremation Service, 1321 Berkeley Ave., Charlotte, NC 28204; (704) 641-7606. Online condolences can be shared at www.kennethpoeservices.com.