Port City Wire editor and founder Lee Hernly has died

Lee Hernly, founder and editor of Port City Wire and its predecessor Red Brick Town, died earlier this week.

According to a Facebook post from his brother Jay Hernly, Lee died on Tuesday, July 26.

“Family, church family, friends, colleagues and more, I am posting we lost a good man, former US Air Force Staff Seargant, my bother Lee Hernly on July 26,” wrote Jay wrote.

Jay said Lee was a military vet, serving for seven years and later working gas a Level 2 IT analyst for INALAB Consulting, Inc.

Lee was most widely known as a pioneer in online media in Alexandria, launching a Carlyle/Eisenhower East neighborhood blog in 2006. The blog eventually grew into the popular local blog Red Brick Town, which eventually became Port City Wire.

“When we launched 8 years ago at the old site, the Westin Alexandria hotel had yet to be built, the Carlyle Square Condominiums was in the process of being developed, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark campus was in the final stages of being built as was the Whole Foods Market in our Carlyle/Eisenhower East area,” Lee wrote in 2014. “The Hoffman Town Center plan had been released, and the Eisenhower East Small Area Plan was still being amended. Now, we have the National Science Foundation moving into the area in a few years and Carlyle South community coming online. Our Carlyle/Eisenhower East community in Alexandria, Virginia has come a long way baby!”

As part of Red Brick Town and Port City Wire, Lee expanded the blog into a full news site covering larger swaths of the city. Port City Wire covered everything from movie reviews to traffic closures and shootings, though publication stopped last October.

Photo via Lee Hernly/Facebook