Retired journalist and former Bermuda resident Morley Safer has died at 84.

Safer, a fixture on the news programme 60 Minutes since 1970, lived for a period in the 1980s at Mizzentop in Warwick with his wife, commuting to New York for work.

He served as a TV news correspondent during the Vietnam War before joining the award-winning 60 Minutes, which aired every Sunday on CBS. It has been described as “the most successful television broadcast in history” and Safer enjoyed the longest run anyone has had on primetime network television — 46 years. In the wake of his passing, local resident Joy Nash recalled a brief encounter with the journalist many years ago.

“I was riding on a horse and he was standing out by the entrance.” she said. “He saw me and immediately asked, ‘Where did you get the horse?’.”

She told Safer that it was hers and, recognising him from television, asked if he was Morley Safer.

“It was nice to see someone who was famous. I’m sorry to hear that he died.”

Meanwhile, a letter published in the Vancouver Sun by former Bermuda resident Margaret Shapiro recollected a kind moment shared on a flight from Bermuda to New York. Mrs Shapiro wrote that she was living in Bermuda at the time when she heard her sister had been killed in a car accident in Canada. When she got on the plane, she was in the seat next to Safer.

“He asked me where I was going and I told him the very sad circumstances,” she wrote. “Normally I would have been excited to sit beside someone I had seen on TV for years. But I was so numb with grief that nothing really mattered. I told him I was concerned about making my flight to Vancouver as I had to change terminals and there were ice storms in New York that day. He told me to stick with him and he would see to it that I made my connection.

“He stayed with me until I picked up my bag and then directed me to his limousine waiting for him. He instructed his driver to take me to my terminal. As we travelled through the freezing rain, he showed me a book of flight schedules and told me, ‘If you miss your flight, keep moving. Go to this airline and try to get there via Chicago’.”

She described Mr Safer as one of the kindest individuals she had ever met.