Justin: Why Hopkins native Aaron Brown, who died Sunday, was such a memorable broadcaster

Hopkins native Aaron Brown, who died Sunday at the age of 76, will best be remembered as CNN’s breaking-news anchor in the early 2000s.

I also knew him as my 9/11 soulmate.

On that fateful day in 2001, I was hunting to find a way to contribute to the newsroom’s coverage when a colleague mentioned that Brown, who had just been hired by CNN, was from Minnesota.

I was familiar with the broadcaster from his previous work on ABC’s “World News Now,” catnip for fellow newshounds with insomnia. But I had no idea he was one of us.

Brown hadn’t officially started his new duties when the World Trade Center was attacked, but he quickly jumped into action, speeding 30 blocks and running red lights to get to the New York studio.

Once there, he started to unbutton his shirt in the elevator, ran into his office, dumped his beeper and phone and rushed into the studio to change. The time it took to get from the front door to being on the air: seven minutes.

For the next 10 hours, he led the award-winning coverage, mostly from a rooftop near Ground Zero,

Considering the hectic schedule — and the fact that we didn’t know each other — I was shocked when he agreed to do a phone interview just 15 minutes after he had signed off.

He mostly babbled, about how he managed to cram in so much information and still stay focused, about his 12-year-old daughter and wondering if she watched him on TV, about New Yorkers, how calm and civilized they were in the face of such destruction, about how he was going to brush his teeth since he didn’t bring an overnight bag for his stay in some fleabag hotel across the street.

He talked about how he had the good sense during the coverage to shut up. At one point he decided that they had been talking for so long, throwing so much information at the world, that it was time to take a moment. He asked the control room to just show the wreckage with no talking heads, no news reports.

“Let’s just think about that 50,000 people came to work in that building. You don’t need words,” he said. “There are moments when you’re anchoring that are almost cathartic.”

It was a moment Brown had trained for his entire life. He started when he was 14 years old, watching coverage of the Kennedy assassination from the home in St. Louis Park where his family had moved from Hopkins.

He had known for years that he wanted to be a journalist, visited the Minneapolis Star, published a neighborhood newspaper, pretended to be an NBC News correspondent in the bathroom mirror.

After watching Walter Cronkite conduct the TV coverage of that terrible day in 1963, he was certain that was the place for him.

Brown attended the University of Minnesota and was hired at age 18 to host a nightly talk show on WLOL-FM. He moved to Seattle, worked as a TV anchor and reporter there for many years. Then he joined ABC News.

His idol was that network’s anchor Peter Jennings. But the Midwesterner had a very different approach, more folksy than regal. He wasn’t the voice of God; he was the voice of your next-door neighbor.

“If you don’t look like Peter or sound like Tom [Brokaw], you’ve got to come up with something else,” Brown told me in 2004 when we had breakfast together in Minneapolis, where he was giving two speeches and visiting his mother. “I’m just the Midwestern guy who’s trying to talk the truth.”

It was one of many encounters we shared over the years. He even took a day off at the height of his career to fly to Texas so he could speak at a high school journalism camp I helped create. He was our first superstar speaker, making it much easier to secure future guests such as Brian Williams, Hoda Kotb and Carl Bernstein.

Brown wasn’t conventional. He wore glasses. He smoked. He ordered an unhealthy breakfast of eggs, potatoes, bacon and toast, blanketing it with salt.

He could be brusque. When the waitress came over and asked if he was done with his meal, Brown gave her a harsh look.

“I’m chewing.”

In 2005, Radar Magazine named him the country’s vainest anchor. His response: “Being described as vain is a victory for color-blind people everywhere.”

Brown also wasn’t afraid to show his feelings, a no-no at the time, which probably contributed to CNN’s decision to end their relationship in 2005.

He took criticism for sometimes getting too emotional during CNN’s coverage of the Iraq war, even crying on air.

“If people don’t think that’s going to affect me somehow, they’re watching the wrong guy,” Brown told me at the time. “No one anchor gets all the viewers. Some people want a more detached view of it, some people want more of a cheerleader’s view, and some want a more human view.”

Brown continued to contribute after his time at CNN. He hosted PBS’ “Wide Angle” and became Rhodes Chair in Public Policy and American Institutions at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

I spoke less and less with Brown as time went on. But that connection from 9/11 remained. I can’t think of that horrific day without remembering Brown’s steady, sympathetic narration.

I’m sure I’m not alone.

“I think it’s important what we do,” he told me two days into the 9/11 coverage. “It’s not the same as running blood down to volunteers or bringing them food. Those people look exhausted, and God will be especially kind to them. But in a much smaller way, I think we contribute to something that’s important.“