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Greenlee alum, White House reporter dies at 78By Matt Neznanski Hugh Sidey, a Greenlee School alumnus and veteran White House correspondent who covered presidents for Time magazine for more than 40 years, died of a heart attack Nov. 21 in Paris. Sidey wrote the magazine’s “The Presidency” column, which appeared from 1966 to 1996. He was also Time’s Washington bureau chief and was a contributing editor at the time of his death. A graduate of Iowa State University, Sidey earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1950. He was the keynote speaker at the Greenlee School’s Centennial celebration in April. “He inspired faculty and students with his anecdotes and advice,” said Greenlee Director Michael Bugeja. “Hugh’s life was a blessing to us all.” Sidey joined Life magazine in New York in 1955 and went to the Washington staff of its sister publication, Time, in 1957, where he began covering the Eisenhower administration. He wrote about every administration since. He wrote or contributed to seven books on the chief executive, including “Time: Hugh Sidey's Portraits of the Presidents,” published in 2004, and was a chairman of the White House Historical Association. As White House correspondent, Sidey witnessed many historical events. He traveled with John F. Kennedy to the Vienna Summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and was with Kennedy when the president was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Sidey traveled with Richard Nixon on the president’s visit to China in 1972 and recorded Nixon’s resignation two years later. Sidey was one of the few reporters Ronald Reagan talked to regularly, and was also at the White House in 1993 when Bill Clinton began peace talks between Israel and the PLO. A fourth-generation newsman, Sidey was born in Greenfield, Iowa, in 1927. He worked for newspapers in Council Bluffs and Omaha, Neb., as well as for his family's weekly newspaper in Greenfield, the Greenfield Adair County Free Press. Sidey and his wife, Anne, married in 1953 and had four children.
Last updated: Dec. 5, 2005 |
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