http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiMxRAlNFBw&feature=related

“I love it all, but my family and The Kelly Fund for Lupus are most important to me,” Blackmon says. “New Jersey is home now. We moved here when Kelly was just beyond being a toddler. It was her fourth birthday, and at school it was her birthday and Martin Luther King’s birthday, so it was like they were celebrating that she’d arrived. This is all she’s known. She’s grown up being a Jersey girl, and I was a Southerner. It’s been this conflict of cultures and upbringings. I have now lived here longer than I lived in Georgia. So I say that Jersey is home and this is the place I was always meant to be.”

“I’ve interviewed Jack Kevorkian, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. I’m supposed to have a ‘get’ list, right? Oprah talks about wanting to interview O.J. and getting him to confess. Mine would not be people like that. I’d like to sit down with the President’s kids. Nobody talks to the presidential kids. I’d like to talk to them.”

“I love our local movie theater – the TENAFLY CINEMA 4. I can walk there for the exercise, and I feel safe at night. I see people and talk to them; it’s not like you’re among strangers.”

“I love the local bookstore, WOMRATH’S.”

“A couple of years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a restaurant called CAFE ANGELIQUE. I’d never eaten outside and I was like, ‘This is so wonderful.’ I’m just so blessed to still be discovering parts of Tenafly. Now I want to discover the parks in Tenafly. I’m going to discover my own town.”

“I get food to go from BRASSERIE on Washington Street. The food is divine.”

“I love my job. Every day is different, and, fortunately, not every day is about bad news. There was even a time when we had a ‘Good News’ segment, where we went out and found good news stories to tell every day. Now we have a segment called ‘FYI,’ For Your Interest, which is news that people are interested in. So I enjoy reporting the big stories and giving information and giving opinions, and I love it any time I can help somebody or help them help themselves. It’s really heartwarming.”

By: Ian Spelling, 201 Magazine/Bergen.com
Date: October 2, 2011
Source: http://www.bergen.com/people/Person-to-Person_Tenafly_resident_My9_news_co-anchor_Brenda_Blackmon_considers_herself_a_Jersey_girl.html

“We spent quality time together in Rome, Scotto recalls. “Unfortunately, we were there for the Holy Father’s (Pope John Paul II) funeral.”

Scotto and Blackmon shared a crew during their two weeks at the Vatican.

“She was the perfect partner to have. … I got to know …what a beautiful person she is [and] what a great mother she is,” Scotto says. “She’s just good—inside and out.”

In addition to her standout work at Channel 9, Blackmon gives back to the community—specifically to college journalism students—conducting an annual retreat at the WWOR studios in Secaucus, N.J.

Blackmon’s beginnings at WWOR go back to “9 Broadcast Plaza” – a remnant from the “News at Noon” days. The show also introduced “Today” anchor Matt Lauer to New York viewers.

Before that, Blackmon established herself as an anchor in her hometown of Columbus, Georgia.

It has been an honor-filled week for the veteran anchor. On Tuesday, Blackmon was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award as part of luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria recognizing Black Media Legends. (Now in its fourth year, Blackmon was among the first group of honorees.)

By: Jerry Barmash, NY Media Examiner/Examiner.com
Date: February 4, 2010
Source: http://www.examiner.com/media-in-new-york/brenda-blackmon-celebrates-20-years-at-wwor#ixzz1fc91EpCV

She hates big malls. She does not understand why the Turnpike isn’t free. And she doesn’t eat bagels. But otherwise Brenda Blackmon, co-anchor at WWOR-TV My9, says she feels right at home in New Jersey.

“This is where I was suppose to be all my life,” says the Georgia native. “Oh God, I love it here. I really just love it here.” The feeling seems to be mutual. Blackmon has received numerous broadcasting awards, including multiple Emmys, and holds honorary doctorates from her alma mater, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and from Caldwell College.

Watching the upbeat anchorwoman on My9 at 11 each night, it’s hard to imagine her as a civil rights pioneer. But Blackmon, who has lived in New Jersey since 1990, spent much of her early life breaking down racial barriers in the Deep South.

Growing up in Columbus, Georgia, in the waning days of Jim Crow, Blackmon endured the humiliation of riding in the backs of buses and sitting in designated sections of restaurants because of the color of her skin. In 1970, she became a member of the second group of African-American students admitted into the University of Georgia, where she studied broadcasting. She began her journalism career at a television station in her hometown, where some sources refused to talk to her, and a statue of a Confederate soldier stood in front of the network building. “The things that I overlooked then,” she says, “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t overlook now.”

In 1973, after six years of paying her dues as a reporter, Blackmon became the first black anchor in Columbus. “When you’re there and you’re doing it, you don’t know that you are there and you’re doing it,” she says of her landmark achievements.

Blackmon then took a job in the larger market of Nashville, Tennessee, but still dealt with discrimination, even from her manager, who told her that her lips were too glossy and she needed to lose weight. “All that did was make me want to eat more because I was depressed that my boss was calling me fat,” says Blackmon, who was once a plus-size model.

Next, her ambitions brought her to the metropolitan area. Résumé in hand, she landed a job in 1990 with WWOR My9 as a general-assignment reporter and fill-in anchor. Blackmon and her husband settled into a home in Englewood with their 4-year-old daughter, Kelly, and began the transition to Jersey life.

“The scariest thing about moving here was the cost of living,” she says. After her first day on the toll roads of New Jersey, Blackmon was completely flustered. “You have to pay to take a ride, and when I asked for directions, people were speaking so fast, I just wanted to cry!”

Even after almost two decades in the Garden State, she gives thanks for GPS. “I think it’s God’s Positional System for Brenda,” she says with a laugh.

Then there was her introduction to the bagel. “They didn’t have bagel shops in the South,” she says. “I didn’t know you are supposed to eat thick bread.”

Blackmon now lives in Tenafly, where she enjoys some traces of the South, even in North Jersey. “My town still believes in mom-and-pop shops,” she says. “I hate the big malls. I know it’s a Jersey thing, but when I first moved here, I asked myself why there were so many shopping malls in one area.”

Even her eating habits hearken back to her Southern roots. “I try to find the best chopped-pork sandwich with coleslaw,” she says, quickly correcting herself. “But it’s called pulled pork here, right?” Blackmon has learned to enjoy that thoroughly Jersey institution, the diner—especially the Coach Diner in North Bergen.

Her position at My9 has given her a ringside seat for some of the most dramatic moments of the past twenty years, including the events of September 11, 2001. “I don’t remember how long I was sitting at the desk, but I do remember the first time I went home, finding a flag and putting it on my mailbox,” she says. “That was the first time I cried, then I went back to work.”

Another challenge was dealing with the death of her friend and My9 colleague, Reggie Harris, who had a heart attack in 2000 at age 46. “To lose him that day and go on air that night was very difficult,” she says. “I remember we had less than a minute before we were about to go on air and I said, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” she recalls. But Blackmon pulled it off. “I swallowed and said, ‘Okay.’”

Covering the inauguration of President Barack Obama became a significant event in her life. “As the great-great-granddaughter of a slave, I was born in the South,” Blackmon wrote on her My9 blog. “I sat on the back of the bus. I sat on the colored side of the waiting rooms and cafeterias. And I sat at my first television anchor desk in a television station with a rebel soldier on the front of the building. But on Inauguration Day I stood up!”

Blackmon’s My9 colleagues appreciate the energy she brings to her job. “A lot of people are happy, but Brenda is joyful,” says co-anchor Harry Martin. “Happy can come and go, but joyful is a fixture. It’s part of her DNA.”

Blackmon has maintained that positive outlook despite running smack into several personal crises. Her marriage came to an end shortly after she moved to New Jersey, leaving Blackmon to start her new life as a single mother. She carried on with the help of her “New Jersey mother,” Elizabeth McKnight, whom she met while attending Ebenezer Baptist Church in Englewood. “Mom McKnight was just a godsend,” Blackmon says. “She encouraged me to learn and be educated.”

Indeed, Blackmon, who started her career before completing her studies at the University of Georgia, eventually received her degree in communication from Fairleigh Dickinson University the same year her daughter Kelly graduated from high school.

In 2002, Blackmon was hit with a potentially crushing blow. Kelly, who was away at college in Virginia, called her mother one day to say her skin was breaking out. “I’m just a Southern mom, so I told her to put some Vaseline on it, it would be fine,” Blackmon says. But the problem persisted. A doctor in New Jersey discovered Kelly had lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that can damage skin, joints, and internal organs, and debilitate the immune system.

Kelly was treated, went back to school, graduated, and married her college sweetheart, Alfonso Ray. Then, in June 2007, the lupus returned. Kelly went into a coma overnight and lay in intensive care for 52 days.
“We literally asked for people to start praying around the world, and the next day she opened her eyes,” says Blackmon. Kelly is now regaining her body movement and is known as the miracle child by her doctors, friends, and especially her mother.

Eager to make a difference, Blackmon became a Celebrity Walk chairwoman for the Alliance for Lupus Research (lupusresearch.org). She has also established the Kelly Fund for Lupus, Inc. (thekellyfundforlupus.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting those affected by lupus, educating the public, and helping to find a cure.

Next spring, Blackmon will embark on another new chapter: teaching a class in broadcasting at Fairleigh Dickinson. Blackmon also operates her own business, Brenda Blackmon Communications Inc., through which she makes public appearances, runs motivational events, and conducts an annual journalism retreat where college students tour the My9 studio and film a live stand-up. “They get a chance to see what it is really like to be on TV,” Blackmon says.

Despite everything on her plate, Blackmon still ponders new frontiers. “Mom McKnight wants me to get a PhD. and to write a book…so that’s what I need to do,” she says.

“I just thank God that I can keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

By: Alicia Staffa, New Jersey Monthly Magazine
Date: July 13, 2009
Source: http://njmonthly.com/articles/lifestyle/people/making-her-own-news.html

That they are doing anything together is miraculous. Two years ago this week, Kelly, 25, nearly died, her body ravaged by lupus.

Doctors told Blackmon what no parent wants to hear. “They said, she’s not going to make it,” Blackmon says. “It’s time for you to take her off the respirator.”

Kelly was – and still is – everything a parent could ask for: She was newly married, smart, a college grad on her way to a big career.

She’d been diagnosed in 1999 with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that affects about 1.4 million Americans. She had a couple of bouts with the illness, but nothing like what hit in 2007.

Returning from a trip abroad, Blackmon got a message from her son-in-law, Alfonso Ray, that Kelly was in trouble.

“I got back and she was hospitalized in a coma,” Blackmon says. “Every system began to shut down.” Lupus does that. It can hit every major organ – heart, lungs, kidneys, even the brain.

“We were asked to make the decision. We were as close as you can get. We were told it was time to make it,” Blackmon says, her voice slowing.

“One thing I did,” she says, quietly, near tears. “I kind of made a deal with God, we all do that. I literally said, ‘Okay God, my life for hers.’ I did it. I meant it. And I think He knew I meant it. I said okay. Take me. He let us both live.”
Neither Blackmon nor her son-in-law asked to stop life support. Good thing. Kelly soon opened her eyes, though she was far from out of the woods. She spent 52 days in intensive care.

“When she was at her worst point, there were days I could not put one foot in front of the other,” she says. “One day you could have your child and one day she could die. I came to work most of the time, except for during the week she said she might not be around anymore.”

After leaving the ICU, Kelly spent several months in rehabilitation relearning the stuff most of us take for granted, like talking and walking.

Two years ago this weekend, mother and daughter were supposed to participate in their first Alliance for Lupus Research walk. They’ll make it this time, Sunday at 10 a.m. (check-in is at 9), leading a team of walkers representing a nonprofit Blackmon formed: The Kelly Fund for Lupus.

She realizes that while Kelly survived the big battle, lupus can strike again at any moment. Still, watching Kelly near death gave Blackmon a new perspective on everything.

“It made me look at life completely differently. When people talk about my job or whatever they’re going through, I think, I’ve seen worse. That was the worst possibility there is,” she says.

“With children, you learn love and unconditional love. To lose a child, you lose what you base hope on. The rest is not important.”

By: Richard Huff, TV Editor, Daily News
Date: June 5, 2009
Source: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-06-05/entertainment/17925586_1_alliance-for-lupus-research-intensive-walk