Gerry Brooks, anchor at NBC-owned WVIT in Hartford, waited until after the November sweeps to reveal he’d be off the air until January because of surgery for prostate cancer. As Brooks told the Hartford Courant‘s MaryEllen Fillo, he wanted to wait until after the surgery–and after the book–to share the news:
“I don’t want to be the story, I want to tell stories,” said Brooks, one of Connecticut’s favorite anchors. “It made sense to me to just say nothing until I had to and the fact of the matter is I have had friends and relatives who had far worse kinds of cancer and I felt fortunate that what I was dealing with was completely doable and curable,” he said. “And I had no desire to trade cancer into ratings points.”
AdvertisementBrooks said Thursday he has known about the prostate cancer for about a year, but it wasn’t until recently that doctors advised it was time for the robotic surgery to remove the infected gland.