An Honor to Pat

When a longtime TV staffer passes away, newsrooms usually put together a nice graphic, air a quick look back at their career, and move on.

Over at Nexstar’s WJW (Cleveland), they took things to a whole new level—literally.

The station recently paid tribute to Pat Brady, who passed away following a year-long battle with cancer. Brady spent more than a decade as the original traffic reporter inside "Sky Fox," racking up an estimated 12,000 hours in the air reporting on morning and afternoon commutes across Northeast Ohio.

To honor her memory, WJW took to the skies. Sky Fox pilot Carrie and reporter Patty Harken flew a flight path over the Slavic Village neighborhood where Brady lived, using flight tracking software to spell out the name “PAT” in the sky.

It was a unique and fitting tribute to someone who spent over a decade viewing Cleveland from above.