Longtime WSB-TV news anchor Don Farmer dies at 82

ATLANTA — Longtime Atlanta news anchor Don Farmer has died at 82.

Today, the entire WSB-TV family is mourning Farmer as a colleague and friend.

Farmer was the father of current WSB-TV anchor Justin Farmer, who announced his father’s death on his Facebook page.

“There’s only one Don Farmer, and I’ll miss you dad more than words could possibly capture,” Justin Farmer wrote.

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Farmer worked for ABC and NBC news before becoming one of the original anchors for CNN in Atlanta in 1980. Farmer’s novelist’s eye for detail a nd pioneering attitude caught the attention of Ted Turner.

In 1987, he joined WSB-TV, where he manned the anchor desk alongside Monica Pearson for 10 years, earning the trust of so many Georgians.

“He literally knew how to take a story apart and make it speak to you so that you were interested and invested in it,” Pearson said. “He wanted to make sure that that viewer, understood the story in the best way, and to him, writing was everything.”

You may remember his voice and smile and his passion for his craft. Farmer had a way with words and a passion for telling stories.

While at WSB-TV, Don Farmer covered the onset of the first Iraq War, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the historic Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik and unrest in Central America among other international stories.

Over the course of his career, Farmer’s ambition and talent took him to every corner of the world. His celebrated career brought him many accolades ranging from Emmy’s to several Edward R. Murrow Awards, one of the broadcast industry’s biggest honors.

Justin Farmer said his father wasn’t in the business for the glitz of recognition and remembered his father as a dedicated journalist who felt honest reporting was a duty to the nation.

“Being the son of Don Farmer was fascinating, incessantly enlightening and awesome,” Justin Farmer wrote. “I vividly remember being quite young and having him explain to me such topics as Watergate, America’s bicentennial, the hostage situation in Iran, among others.”

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Farmer retired to Florida in 1997, but continued to work part time in radio and TV news and write books.

He died peacefully at his home in Naples.

He is survived by his wife, Chris Curle; his daughter, Laurie, her husband Hal Thannisch and sons Cole and Cade; his son, Justin and wife Allison and children Sarah Kate, James and Wallace; his sister, Judy and her family.

RAW INTERVIEW: Don Farmer recalls the fall of the Berlin Wall Former WSB-TV anchor Don Farmer describes covering the fall of the Berlin Wall.