Obit

Don Oberdorfer, 84

FORMER WASHINGTON Post diplomatic correspondent who wrote a wide variety of news reports from the Vietnam War to the Soviet Union’s collapse, died last July 23, Thursday, due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84. (“Don Oberdorfer, 84, top diplomatic reporter for Washington Post, dies,” New York Times, July 28, 2015)

Oberdorfer began his career with The Washington Post in 1968 as a White House correspondent. He was also the Post’s northeast Asia correspondent and was based in Tokyo in the early 1970s. He stayed with the newspaper for 25 years until his retirement in 1993, after which he taught at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. (“Don Oberdorfer, longtime diplomatic correspondent for The Post, dies at 84,” The Washington Post, July 24, 2015)

Before joining The Washington Post, Oberdorfer also worked for The Charlotte Observer, The Saturday Evening Post, and Knight Newspapers.

Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations said in an interview that Oberdorfer “was the kind of reporter who was so accurate and so fair that other reporters always read him, and so did the people in the government.” On the other hand, the late Benjamin C. Bradlee, The Washington Post’s executive editor the year Oberdorfer was hired, called him the paper’s “ace foreign policy writer.”

Besides his journalism career, Oberdorfer also published books about Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War.

He is survived by his wife Laura, their children Daniel and Karen, and his brother Eugene.

 Frederick L. Cusick, 65

Longtime reporter for The Inquirer Frederick L. Cusick died Saturday, August 1, due to complications from colon cancer after battling the disease for a year. He was 65.

Cusick began his career at The Inquirer in 1979, writing news about crime, human interest stories, investigative reports, and the affairs of the state government in Harrisburg. (“Frederick L. Cusick, 65, longtime Inquirer reporter and writer,” Philly.com, August 4, 2015). He stayed there until 2005, when he and 70 other veteran journalists left the newsroom  as part of an austerity move. But before his 26-year career with the newspaper, Cusick was also the editor of Bowdoin College’s school paper. (“Frederick L. Cusic, 65, ‘unrelenting’ investigative reporter,” Philly.com, August 4, 2015)

Cusick was known to colleagues as an “unrelenting” investigative reporter and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for the coverage of the nuclear accident that occurred at Three Mile Island in 1979.

“Fred was one of the most learned—and smartest—reporters I’ve known.” Francisco Delgado, Cusick’s colleague and the night city editor at The Inquirer, said.

Cusick is survived by his wife Lauren, his daughters Marie and Katherine, his mother Barbara, and sisters Martha, Mary, and Sarah.