(This story was posted on Statesman.com)
On a job interview at KTBC television and radio in the early 1970s, Dick Ellis told management he was open to doing just about anything — with one major exception.
“He said, ‘Please don’t put me on TV,'” his wife, Gay Ellis, recalled Wednesday.
But within weeks, Ellis was anchoring the morning news for the legendary Austin station, launching a TV broadcast career that continued for more than three decades and made Ellis one of the city’s most trusted journalists of his time.
On Wednesday, he died at his Round Rock home at age 69 from complications related to colon cancer, for which he was diagnosed in September 2016.
His death came as Ellis had just completed a series of reports for KVUE-TV, where he anchored for more than a dozen years starting in the 1980s, about the city’s infamous yogurt shop murders. For years, Ellis had covered the still-unsolved 1991 case of four teenage girls killed at an “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” shop in North Austin.
“He was very concerned about accuracy, and the subject of his reports, and how they were treated,” Gay Ellis said.
The couple met as 15-year-olds at a church youth group in Laredo and came to Austin, where Gay Ellis could attend the University of Texas.
Dick Ellis worked for KTBC for two stints, returning after a 12-year run at KVUE. He left KTBC a second time in 2004.
