Orien Reid Nix, Hall of Fame TV reporter and international Alzheimer’s volunteer, has died at 79

Orien Reid Nix, 79, of King of Prussia, retired Hall of Fame reporter for KYW-TV and WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, owner of Consumer Connection media consulting company, the first Black and female chair of the international board of the Alzheimer’s Association, former social worker, mentor, and volunteer, died Tuesday, June 17, of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at Wyncote Place assisted living in Montgomery County.

Charismatic, telegenic, empathetic, and driven by a lifelong desire to serve, Mrs. Reid Nix worked as a consumer service and investigative TV reporter for Channels 3 and 10 in Philadelphia for 26 years, from 1973 to her retirement in 1998. She anchored consumer service segments, including the popular Market Basket Report, that affected viewers’ lives and aired investigations on healthcare issues, price gouging, fraud, and food safety concerns.

The Market Basket Report compared food prices at local groceries in the 1970s and ’80s and made Mrs. Reid Nix a household name for many TV viewers. “We’d be in the grocery store doing a report, and the ladies in the aisles would come running when they heard her voice,” said Artis Hall, a longtime cameraman and friend of Mrs. Reid Nix. “They knew she was the most honest and truthful person you will meet in life.”

Mrs. Reid Nix also addressed consumer complaints on the air, confronted uncooperative business owners, and said repeatedly that her goal was to spur commercial competition and help viewers save money and receive fair treatment. “I wanted to do right by the public,” she said in 2018.

Trained in social work and communications at what is now Clark Atlanta University in Georgia, she was a social worker for the School District of Philadelphia in the early 1970s. Joe Donovan, a Daily News reporter turned radio broadcaster, noticed and admired her service-minded convictions and distinctive voice, and suggested she trailblaze consumer service reporting for KYW.

“I resisted the idea at first,” Mrs. Reid Nix told the Daily News in 1980. “Until Joe pointed out I’d still be doing social work, but a kind of social work that would be on a broader basis.”

She talked herself onto KYW-TV in 1973, joined WCAU in 1979, and went on to earn several Emmy nominations and awards from the Philadelphia Press Association, Institute of Food Technologists, Woman’s Day magazine, and other organizations.

She did a five-part series called “Sex for Sale” for Channel 10 in 1980 and was featured in deep-dive stories about adoption and Alzheimer’s disease in the Daily News and Inquirer. In 2018, she was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame.

“She worked really hard to get to where she got,” said longtime TV colleague and friend Larry Kane. “She had a unique voice and was extremely warm and radiant.”

Mrs. Reid Nix founded Consumer Connection as a media consultant company in 1999 and represented supermarket chains, work programs, and other business and social groups. Friends and colleagues called her a mentor and inspiration.

“Her voice was iconic,” said Teresa Hinke, her longtime research assistant. “She was so kind, so sincere. There was no one like her.”

For years, she was a star advocate and top fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association, and she cared for her mother, who died of the disease in 1992. She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the local Alzheimer’s Association chapters in the 1990s and was a pioneering chair of its national board of directors from 1999 to 2003.

“I had a great TV career, but this has been the most rewarding work experience of my life,” she told The Inquirer in 2002. “You have to be passionate about something, I believe, and this is it for me.”

She was also a onetime president of the Philadelphia Consumer Council and board member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute on Aging, National Advisory Council on Aging, National Institutes of Health Council of Councils, and National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

She helped establish the Montgomery County chapter of Jack and Jill of America and was active with the Links and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. “She was a softy who wanted to help everybody,” her friend Hall said.

Orien Edwina Reid was born Oct. 21, 1945, in Macon, Ga. The daughter of a minister, she grew up in Atlanta and earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in psychiatric social work at Clark.

She adopted a daughter, Traci, and a son, Robert, in the 1970s and talked candidly to the Daily News and other outlets about the challenges and rewards of adoption and single motherhood. “My home life is much more important than my work,” she told the Daily News in 1979. “I’m a mother, the mothering type.”

She married and divorced Crawford Johnson. She married Charles Nix later, and they lived in Laverock, Montgomery County, and later King of Prussia. He died earlier.

Mrs. Reid Nix collected African art and artifacts. She enjoyed movies and traveling, especially to Block Island in Rhode Island.

She toured the world through her TV work and later with her husband and the Alzheimer’s Association. In 1980, Daily News columnist Jack McKinney said: “Orien Reid is a unique lady.”

Her daughter said: “She had positive energy and love to give people. She gave back to the community. She was an overall lovely person.”

In addition to her children, Mrs. Reid Nix is survived by stepchildren Cassandra Behler and Rodney Nix, and other relatives.

Visitation with the family is to be from 9 to 10:45 a.m. Saturday, June 28, at Bethlehem Baptist Church, 712 Penllyn Pike, Spring House, Pa. 19477. Celebrations of her life are to follow. A funeral service is to be at noon.

Donations in her name may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Floor 17, Chicago, Ill. 60601.