Jim Vance announced to viewers in May that he was battling cancer.

The District “lost a local legend” over the weekend, said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. “This is a loss for D.C.,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser.

NBC4 anchor Jim Vance died over the weekend at 75 after a brief fight with cancer.

“We’ve lost our leader, our conscience, and, above all, our friend,” said NBC4’s Doreen Gentzler in announcing the news on air.

After a career teaching in Philadelphia, Vance started at the NBC station in 1969. He began co-anchoring in 1972, one of the first African American in such a prominent role in a major market newscast. Vance told viewers in May that he was battling cancer.

“His success was rooted in the assured way he delivered the news—with empathy but no sentimentality or ideology. Even when the news was most jarring—as the day in 1982 of the Air Florida plane crash and Metro derailment (for which he earned one of his 19 local Emmy Awards)—viewers could find comfort in Mr. Vance’s calm professionalism,” wrote the Washington Post editorial board.

“Once I got over the shock of who I was sitting next to I realized the power of someone with presence. It is a feeling that is indefinable. A kind of quiet authority that you don’t understand but is strong enough that you want to pay attention,” his colleague Angie Goff said.

Vance was immortalized alongside Barack Obama, Prince, and a dozen other black legends on the Ben’s Chili Bowl mural just a few weeks ago.

“The blessings never stop flowing,” Vance told the crowd. “You cannot imagine my joy and my pride when I got the word a month or so ago that all y’all had voted poor ass little me to sit on Ben’s Chili Bowl’s wall.”

Remembrances of Vance’s warmth and originality flowed in over the weekend from both his colleagues and the people that he spent decades.

“We both just loved this city, the people, so much,” said WUSA9 anchor Bruce Johnson in tearful tribute.

“Whether it was the single, quarter-inch stripe on his otherwise white-collared shirts, or the gold hoop in his left ear that appeared in tribute to his friend the late Ed Bradley, Vance on television was the walking embodiment of cool. He was bespoke, original, and contrarian,” the Washington City Paper wrote in a tribute.

“He had his finger on the pulse of the city, unlike others,” said Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray.

Clinton Yates, now of The Undefeated, recalled how Vance gave him early encouragement as a lowly intern.

“He made me believe I REALLY could do it,” Yates writes. “If you’re from D.C. in my era, he’s your everything in local news. His loss is staggering even if we knew it was his time.”