Another veteran reporter for an NBC owned station is retiring at the end of the year.
WRC reporter Pat Collins has announced his retirement after 36 years at the station.
The Washington, D.C. native joined WRC in 1986 after working as a newspaper reporter, an Army medic in Vietnam, and later as a reporter at WJLA in Washington, D.C. and at WLS in Chicago. He also spent seven years as a general assignment, investigative and feature reporter for WDVM (now WUSA) in Washington, D.C.
The station said he will be remembered for his snow coverage and his “Here, and at the ready” response during the station’s morning meetings.
He’d put on his enormous down coat, nicknamed “The Solution,” and trudge out to his bellwether corner in Northwest to banter with anyone brave enough or desperate enough (hey, someone really needed a sandwich, OK?) to be out in the snow.
Endlessly memeable, Collins has popped up on John Oliver’s HBO show, “Last Week Tonight.” He made it to “Autotune the News.” He suited up in a Wayne Newton costume in Las Vegas while covering the Caps’ Stanley Cup bid. And he famously donned a grape outfit (rented from a Springfield costume shop for a hundred bucks, if memory serves) to interview a high schooler suspended for running across a football field while wearing a banana costume. It’s still showing up on Reddit years later. (Subreddits have included ChaoticWholesome and NottheOnion, both fairly good descriptions for Collins in general).