Old school TV newsman made name at NBC, ABC
Garrick Utley, a globetrotting newscaster who spent 30 years with NBC News as a foreign correspondent, weekend anchor, morningshow host and moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Thursday at his home in New York City. He was 74.
NBC News first announced his death. The cause was prostate cancer.
After joining NBC in1963, Utley spent most of the next 25 years overseas as a foreign correspondent of the old school. He reported from more than 70 countries and was among the first journalists to provide television coverage of thewar in Vietnam.
He later covered such international flash points as the 1968 pro- democracy demonstrations that were part of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the 1973 ArabIsraeli war, revolts against the repressive apartheid regime in South Africa and the fall of the BerlinWall.
Lanky and cosmopolitan, the 6- foot- 6 Utley spoke several languages and seemed at ease wherever his feet touched the ground. Hewas, at various times, NBC’s chief correspondent in London, Berlin and Paris.
Beginning in 1987, Utley was based in New York, working variously as aweekend anchor of the “Nightly News” and “Today” show and, from 1989 through 1991, as moderator of “Meet the Press.”
His successor on the weekend desk of “Nightly News” was Brian Williams, who is now NBC’s top anchor. His chair on “Meet the Press” was taken over by Tim Russert.
“I may have been the only person at NBC News who did every type of programming as host or anchor,” Utley told The Associated Press in 1993. “There’s a risk in being the utility infielder. If you ask whether Iwas being taken for granted, obviously that is a factor in my moving from NBC.”
He joined ABC News in 1993 and returned to his first love as the network’s chief foreign correspondent, based in London.
“I guess I’ve never gotten entirely away from it,” he told TheWashington Post at the time.
Clifton Garrick Utley was born Nov. 19,1939, in Chicago. His parents, Clifton and Frayn Utley, were pioneering broadcast journalists in Chicago, and he began accompanying them to studios at an early age.
Survivors include his wife of 40 years, art historian Gertje Rommeswinkel Utley ofNewYork.