Longtime KOMO anchor Eric Slocum dies at 54 Was familiar voice on radio, television

Eric Slocum, who was part of people's homes for years as a KOMO/4 reporter and anchor and who was a familiar voice to many on KOMO radio, died Saturday. He was 54.

Slocum started at KOMO in 1990 and worked on television until 2001. He bookended his years on television with radio, and left KOMO radio in 2008 to work full time on a memoir.

His death was ruled a suicide. He suffered from depression for several years.

"Everyone in our newsroom who worked with and knew Eric is in shock," KOMO morning host Bill Yeend wrote Wednesday on Facebook. "We have fond memories of his friendship and the work he did."

Slocum got his start in 1976 at a tiny radio station in a small town near Lubbock, Texas, where he was going to college.

"I was the turn-on-the-transmitter guy," he told the P-I's Bill Virgin in 2008.

That first break launched a career, and Slocum moved to a TV station in Lubbock that same year, then to Wichita, Kan., and Oklahoma City, before coming to in Seattle.

Longtime KOMO reporter and anchor Eric Slocum in a Nov. 1995 story about the Beatles in Seattle. He died Feb. 25, 2012, at age 54. (KOMO/4) Longtime KOMO reporter and anchor Eric Slocum in a Nov. 1995 story about the Beatles in Seattle. He died Feb. 25, 2012, at age 54. (KOMO/4) Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Longtime KOMO anchor Eric Slocum dies at 54 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

He had worked in other cities as Dan Slocum, and had written under the name Dan Eric Slocum. But KOMO already had a Dan -- anchorman Dan Lewis – so Slocum volunteered to use his middle name, Bruce. But that didn't work either, since KOMO had longtime sportscaster Bruce King. So he became Eric.

Among the many stories he reported for KOMO was a series of features about the Beatles that aired after the Beatles Anthology in November 1995. A fan of the band, Slocum traveled to England for the project and returned to Abbey Road studios on vacation in 2005.

After taking a buyout from the TV station, Slocum soon wound up back at KOMO, this time on the radio side, when the station landed the Mariners contract and switched to a news format.

Moving back to radio was tough at first, Slocum told Virgin in 2008, because the technology had changed so much in the intervening years.

"I had to learn digital everything," he said, crediting the mentoring of morning co-host Manda Factor, with whom he was initially paired, and the help of afternoon co-host Lisa Brooks and Yeend for getting him through. "They taught me to do radio again."

Slocum grew up in Dallas where he worked on his high school newspaper and the yearbook. He was a poet who also wrote short stories and poems. A poem collection "New Words" was printed in 1996 as a fund-raiser for Children's Hospital and to support pediatric AIDS research.

"This is a sad day for everyone who ever worked with Eric, or heard him during his thousands of hours on radio and TV," KOMO radio reporter Corwin Haeck wrote on Wednesday on Facebook. "Eric was very kind to me when I was brand new in broadcasting.

"Eric, of course, was a wordsmith who could pull a word like sonorous out of thin air and make it sing. I'll miss him greatly."

Slocum and his partner lived in South Seattle with their pit bulls. He loved the animals that no one else would take, colleague Bob Throndsen wrote.

The memoir had a working title "In Danger" and was meant to chronicle how Slocum has dealt with alcoholism. He became sober in 1993 and told the P-I in 2008 that he wanted the memoir to also address his struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and his decision to come out as a gay man.

Slocum told Virgin that readers didn't have to deal with any of those issues personally "to relate to the human ramifications of those challenges."

On his Facebook page earlier this year, Slocum wrote that he still battled major depression and suicide every day.

"People don't like to talk about it," he wrote. "But we, as a culture, MUST deal with mental illness. I will fight like a bear to get a message of NO (STIGMA) out there for those who suffer chronic depression."

Earlier this month, he wrote that a book of his poetry would be published in August or September. His poems, Slocum wrote, remained forever unfinished, only to be completed by each new reader. The day he died, Slocum's poetry site had one last post.

"I've been to Herald Square

and Jerusalem --The River Jordan --

Sea of Galilee --

Golgatha.

I've walked on Penny Lane.

I touched the Hollywood Sign.

so many other journeys.

—But now it's time to rest—

—been a busy day—"

Information from former P-I columnist and reporter Bill Virgin is included in this report. Casey McNerthney can be reached at 206-448-8220 or at caseymcnerthney@seattlepi.com. Follow Casey on Twitter at twitter.com/mcnerthney.

Comments have been disabled due to the sensitive nature of this story.

