Bad News: Ben Horne, Former KTRU Station Manager, Died While Mountaineering in Peru

Got some news today via the {KTRU} folks and wanted to pass it along. Apparently former KTRU Station Manager Ben Horne was on a mountaineering expedition in Peru with climbing partner Gil Weiss when the pair went missing; there’s been a search ongoing for the past couple of days, and I’m told they found Horne and Weiss’s bodies today.

My hearts goes out to their families and to my fellow Rice/KTRU/Wiess cohorts (like me, Horne was a Wiessman). I didn’t know Ben well, but I talked with him a few times back when he ran the station — during the whole shutdown thing in 2000 — and he was always the nicest, coolest, most hardworking guy. If it weren’t for his work at getting the station back on the air, KTRU might’ve died way back then.

Ben (and Gil, too), it was a pleasure meeting you. You’ll be very missed.