‘60 Minutes’ pays homage to Bob Simon in moving tribute

“60 Minutes” pays homage to the “extraordinary career” of its late🌳 veteran correspondent, Bob Si🅘mon, in a touching tribute that was set to air Sunday night.

Fellow “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft introduces the segment, which traces Simon’s 47-year career at the network before he was killed in a car crash on the West🍸 Side Highway in Manhattan🍬 less than two weeks ago.

Even Simon, a “reporter’s reporter,” would have appreciated the irony of being killed near his own studio, Kroft notes in the clip, which was released by the program hours before it was set to air.

“The irony would not have been lost on Bob,” Kroft says. “Irony was one of his favorite jo💝urnalistic devices.”

“He was a brillian🧸t combination of sophistication and street smarts who liked to tell people he was just a Jewish kid from The Bronx,” Kroft says. “He didn’t tell you that he was also Phi Beta Kappa and has been a Fulbright Scholar or that he came to become television’s quintessential foreign correspondent.”

Simon was remembered for having traveled to more than 130 countries to report the news on anything from we🌳ather disasters to major international confliཧcts.

“It was his love of adventur💫e and the search for new experiences that drove him to ex♏plore exotic and often dangerous places,” Kroft says.

Other colleagues such as Jeff Fager, w🔯ho worked as the executive producer of “CBS Evening News” and now does the same job at “60 Minutes,” remember their pal as a go-getter who was never afraid of a story.

“I always thought, ‘I don’t even have to tell him what the story’s about.’🤪 If I tell him, ‘There’s a story waiting for you, get on a plane,’ he’d be on the plane,” Fager says.

Fager points out that Simon’s voicemail warned callers 🔜ofꦫ his fleeting nature.

“I’m not in, and I may be gone 📖for the next several months,” the message said.

But while Simon was known for his hard-hitting news stories, he was also a pro at more feature-based stories, such as the one he did on the Metropolitan Opera House, one of his favorite places that would later host his funeral.

“He loved opera. The Metropolitan Opera was his fa♋vorite place on Earth,” Fager ꩲsays amid footage of a behind-the-scenes look at the Met produced by Simon.

Simon is survived by his wife, daughter and grandson, 🌌Jac🉐k.

“His office walls were covered with pictures of Jack, and Bob sent him letters on his BlackBerry even though Jꦐack wasn’t old enough to read them,” accorℱding to CBS’s tribute.

Simon’s final reporting piece for CBS was a collaboration between him and his daughter, Tanya, who also works for the network. It was about Ebola and aired last Sunday.