‘He was bringing the world to us:’ Remembering Sacramento’s iconic anchor Stan Atkinson

Local legend Stan Atkinson, known for being a longtime news anchor from the late 1950s to 1999, died this weekend at 92 years old. 

Atkinson joined KCRA in 1957 when it was just starting out and retired from KOVR, now known as CBS13, in 1999. 

He is survived by his wife, four children, 14 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. 

Beyond defining local news in the region, he was an Army veteran who dedicated decades of community service raising millions for Sacramento charities and organizations. 

His son, Mike Atkinson, and former Insight Host Beth Ruyak, who worked with Atkinson at KCRA, spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about his lasting impacts. Here’s what they had to say.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Interview highlights 

How have the past 72 hours been for you and your family, being on the receiving end of all of these memories and learning how far his reach is? 

Atkinson: There’s the reality that we live through, there’s a reality that we kind of knew, but we had no idea. This has just been amazing. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get through all the comments, the notes and all the posts that people have made. It’s a mountain's worth of wonderful words that don’t surprise us. He impacted a lot of people. 

You two were co-workers from 1985 to 1988 but friends ever since. How did you two first cross paths? 

Ruyak: In the mid-80s, I was in a newsroom in Minneapolis. Washington Journalism Review Magazine landed on my desk in the newsroom and there was a picture of Stan incognito on a camel in Afghanistan. As I read about this anchorman reporting around the world as a young news journalist, I thought, ‘That’s where I want to be.’ I cold-called the newsroom and they happened to have a position opening up. Entering that newsroom was like entering the land of the giants. But the leadership of Stan, Vicki, was to a young journalist about opportunity, possibility, expectation and a very high bar with his kindness and humanity. It was a remarkable time to be there. It was life-changing for me.

Why did Stan want to become a journalist? 

Atkinson: He loved media, so right out of the Army was on the radio and loved it. The radio station bought a TV station and pushed him out on the stage and it just happened. I think he definitely grew into that. I don’t think there was this great call from heaven, ‘You will be a journalist.’ He grew into that and grew with the industry as it became more and more needed and developed. 

What was it about Sacramento that made this place his home? 

Atkinson: When he got into Sacramento, he just found a station that wanted to innovate, and he loved that. But it was the people. They just embraced him. He was surrounded by appreciation for what he was doing and how he did it. In the Army, he taught. He was a teacher. That’s essentially what he became. That’s what he did every night at 5 p.m.   

Ruyak: He covered stories at a time when you didn’t have to go do a story and find the local connection. [But] for Stan, it was enough to say, ‘I need to go to Somalia and explain why this refugee camp is happening, and you need to become more informed and understand for yourself why it matters.’ He could go tell the very-well-researched story, bring it back objectively, and it’s as if he hung a piece of art on the wall and said, ‘Here is the story. You draw from it what you will and what you need to for your life.’ But he was bringing, before we became a global society, he was bringing the world to us.

Atkinson: A good example of that was his very first trip to Vietnam and he went to Cambodia to this small village that was headed by a Catholic priest from France. He did this incredible documentary on this village that wouldn’t give in to the communist army. This documentary was groundbreaking. Nobody had done this, let alone at a local level. Nobody had gone in there at all, period. In all of media. When that was broadcast, it got to the attention of the Department of Defense and ended up being used as a teaching tool when we entered the war to train the officers what we were walking into. There he was. He’s teaching again.

What drew him to international travel? Not only traveling to other countries, but covering war and conflict. 

Ruyak: He gave that gift to us. He set the expectation that we would think outside of the newsroom box. I was very involved in covering the AIDS story which was unfolding at that time in the 80s. There was the third annual AIDS conference in Washington D.C. ‘Could I go?’ ‘Sure.’ Then there was another conference in Montreal. ‘Could I go?’ ‘Yes.’ Then I wanted to put together a trip to Paris to visit the Pasteur Institute where the AIDS virus had been isolated and talk to French researchers combined with watching the finish of the Tour de France and witness the first American to win that bicycle race. And we figured out how to satellite beam those stories back home. But I don’t know if I hadn’t been in that kind of a newsroom and with somebody like Stan, I’d have had imagination big enough for that.

He did a tremendous amount of community work across the Sacramento area. Where did that come from? 

Atkinson: That grew out of his gratefulness and he knew that it was more than just shaking hands with folks. It had to be brought out with a practical measure that people would understand, ‘I’m committed to the city and helping those who need help.’ Mercy [Foundation] was the big winner with him on the board for 20-something years and helped them with the heart wing that’s at the hospital and so many different big projects. It was just all part of this, ‘I have to give back.’ It genuinely came out of his soul that, ‘I need to help some folks here.’ 

Ruyak: Jerry Lewis was nationally doing the muscular dystrophy telethons. Stan was the Northern California man and his timing would be hilarious. He’d get done with the [5 p.m. show] and get a bite to eat or change into his tux and head to a dinner and he’d spend from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., sometimes it would even be 10:30 p.m. He’d get back for the 11 p.m. news, change his tie, change the jacket. He always had a sense of the fellowship of everybody in it with him. He was a leader and a role model.