Jim Hartz, the low-key, folksy newsman who hosted the "Today" show with Barbara Walters less than halfway through his three-decade television career, died on April 17 in Fairfax County, Va. He died at the age of 22.
His wife told The Washington Post that the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Mr. Hartz was no beginner when he started the show at 34 years old, succeeding Frank McGee, who had died a few months before. He had spent a decade in New York at WNBC, covering local stories, from John V. Lindsay's mayoralty through Robert F. Kennedy's funeral and the Watergate scandal.
The news stories he covered were the end of the Vietnam War and the resignation of President Nixon. His career lasted only two years.
Mr. Hartz was a broadcast journalist and covered many space missions, including the Apollo 15 launch. He and Rick Chappell wrote "Worlds Apart: How the Distance Between Science and Journalism Threatens America's Future" in 1997.
In a 1974 interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Hartz admitted that he would have no recollection of what he had said on the air after a NASA event.
He recalled the first time he saw a rocket lift off at Cape Kennedy.
The Rev. Marvin Dillard Hartz and his wife, Helen Elvira (Potter) Hartz, had a son named James. He was their fifth child.
Jim had a plan to go to medical school, but he was under pressure from his brother to become a doctor. He admitted that he was more interested in journalism in his junior year.
His career progress was rapid. He did internship at local television and radio stations by the time he graduated. He became a host of the morning show on the channel after he was hired as a reporter.
He was hired away from NBC in 1964 after being promoted to news director. Several sources said that he was the youngest correspondent ever hired by the network, as he became anchor of the evening newscasts on WNBC in New York.
When executives chose him to replace Mr. Mr. Hartz's laid-back style seemed to be a better fit with Ms.Walters, who had been promoted to co-host after 13 years with the show and was determined, she made clear, not to take a back seat to anyone.
NBC officials had to rethink when she said she was leaving to become ABC's evening news co-anchor.
Jane Pauley, a relatively unknown 25-year-old, was hired by them. Fearing that she and Mr. Hartz might have less than stellar chemistry, NBC went back to Mr. Brokaw and persuaded him to take the co-hosting job.
It was announced that Mr. Hartz would be given a new job as the host of Today, reporting from across the nation. That arrangement was also short-lived.
He was a news anchor at the NBC station in Washington from 1976 to 1979. He co-hosted a celebrity talk show with the actress Mary Martin and a weekly science show on PBS. John Corry of The New York Times reviewed the show in 1985 and said it was "vaguely, but never unintelligently, cheerful."
In the early 1990s, Mr. Hartz was a host of Asia Now, a PBS co-production with NHK, Japan. He became chairman of the Will Rogers Memorial Commission in 1993. The Will Rogers Memorial and Will Rogers Birthplace are overseas.
He married his high school sweetheart, who died in January, while he was still in college, and they had three children. He married a social worker a year after their divorce.
She has two daughters, a granddaughter and six great-grandchildren. John Mitchell Hartz died in 2015.
Mr. Hartz was fascinated by the space program. He described the 1969 moon landing as the grandest thing we could think of at the time.
He said that they went there to check it out.
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