Bob Simon "had a sharp intolerance for injustice"

Bob Simon, the journalism icon who died Wednesday in a car crash in New York City at the age of 73, was no stranger to dangerous situations. Renowned for his warzone reporting, Simon braved risks in Vietnam, the Middle East and numerous other conflict zones. Longtime "60 Minutes" colleague and "CBS Evening News" managing editor and anchor Scott Pelley recalled Simon's motivation for reporting from such hotspots.

"Bob had a sharp intolerance for injustice and he had equal opportunity rage for every injustice committed in every corner of this earth," Pelley said.

Simon encountered and survived many close calls reporting in the field, including 40 days in an Iraqi prison where he was beaten, starved and threatened with death.

Pelley described him as "a man of enormous courage."

"At the age of 73 and having been from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle and everywhere in between -- what an amazing life," Pelley said.

Among the memories Pelley has of Simon, one moment in particular stands out.

"I'll never forget an interview he did with an Israeli general, for example. He looked up at the general and he said, 'You're one of the greatest generals that Israel has ever produced,' and the man smiled and nodded and Bob said, 'So why are you killing children?'" Pelley said. "There was a Bob Simon punch, a roundhouse punch, that he could knock anybody out with, and it was in the form of a question."

Pelley recalled learning the ropes of being a war correspondent from Simon during the opening days of the Gulf War in 1991.

"We had a plan that if there was ever an air raid where our CBS bureau was, we would all muster in the bureau, everyone would be accounted for and we would go to the bomb shelter. Well, one night, sure enough, the air raid sirens go off, the Scud missiles are coming into Dhahran, Saudi Arabia," Pelley said. "There are explosions everywhere. Everybody musters in the bureau -- we can't find Bob."

They did, eventually.

"He was on the roof, on the phone with CBS Radio describing the explosions as they landed," Pelley said. "And in that moment, I said to myself, 'Got it. That's what a war correspondent does.'"

Anyone who watched Simon's work on "60 Minutes" and "60 Minutes II" knew his range as a reporter, his skill with storytelling and the grace of his words.

He helped us understand the language of elephants and took us back to the nuclear calamity at Fukushima. He showed us the world through the eyes of Sudan's "lost boys" and made us comprehend the enormity of the massacres in Srebrenica.

A stark contrast to the depravity he witnessed, Pelley said, was Simon's love for his family.

"[He] lived to see his grandson grow to the age of 3, which was the joy. My wife once asked him, 'What's it like to be a granddad?' and he said, 'Well, there is one perfect child.' And it was wonderful."

Simon was also a "great lover of opera, great lover of music, great lover of the human spirit," Pelley said.

"When the human spirit overcame those injustices ... that was what Bob loved to see. Hemingway-esque, really. Epic stories of human struggle," Pelley said. "I think he threw himself into these situations because he could write great things about epic events."