Wendy Rieger, NBC4 News Anchor for Decades, Signs Off for Last Time

Wendy Rieger has been a news anchor on NBC4 for a quarter century. But that came to an end when she retired on Friday, Dec. 17, reports WTOP.

So what’s ahead for Rieger, who recently turned 65,

“I’m going to give myself permission to just exhale. It’s been a long career,” Rieger said. “I think everyone especially in this town which is so go, go, go, go, go, go, go, has to give themselves permission to do that.”

That is not always easy for a woman who describes herself as a bit antsy when she tries to relax. But she has learned a trick to relaxation — poetry.

“I’ve always been a big fan of poetry. I just love Mary Oliver and W. S. Merwin,” she said. “I have specific poems I pick up and start reading them. It turns the volume down in my head and kind of helps me slow down.”

Rieger, states WTOP, who revealed over the summer she’d had brain surgery to remove a tumor, says her retirement has been in the works for a couple years and she is looking forward to what the future holds.

“Anytime you can get a blank page that you get to start writing on, when you got your life ahead of you, that’s kind of glorious and what we worked for,” she said.

The ‘we’ she is referring to includes her husband. He retired a few months ago, adds WTOP.

“We have a 30-acre farm out in Rappahannock County,” she said, ”We want to kind of figure out what to do with that land. We keep wondering if we’re going to do an animal sanctuary out there, a farm animal sanctuary.”

More here.