JOURNALIST HAD DEEP ROOTS IN WASHINGTON

‘LIVING LEGEND’

Cokie Roberts, a prominent journalist and political commentator, who won three Emmy Awards during a long career with NPR and ABC News, died Tuesday in Washington, at 75.

Roberts was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and named a “living legend” by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2008. A rare woman in the newsroom in the 1960s, she worked at CBS News, NPR and PBS before joining ABC News in 1988.

A veteran congressional reporter and consummate Washington insider, she co-anchored the Sunday political show This Week with Sam Donaldson from 1996 to 2002, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She wrote eight books, including several bestsellers, penned a political column and mentored women in media.

Her father, known as Hale Boggs, was Democratic majority leader in the U.S. House, and her mother, Lindy Claiborne Boggs, launched her own congressional career after he died in a 1972 Alaska plane crash.

Roberts’ brother, Thomas Boggs Jr., was a lobbyist and master deal-maker who helped pioneer the “revolving door” system of hiring former members of Congress to lobbying positions; her sister, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, was mayor of Princeton, N.J.

“I’m the only person in my original nuclear family who didn’t run for Congress,” Roberts once said. “I have always felt semi-guilty about it, but I’ve sort of assuaged my guilt by writing about it and feeling like I’m educating people about the government and how to be good voters and good citizens.”

She was born Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs on Dec. 27, 1943; her brother nicknamed her Cokie.

Her father, Thomas Hale Boggs Sr., was elected from Louisiana to the House in 1940. He lost a reelection bid but returned to office in 1947, leading Cokie to spend much of her childhood in Washington halls. Her mother served nine terms in Congress.

Roberts received a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in political science in 1964. Her early jobs included radio reporting overseas for CBS News.

She covered Capitol Hill for NPR from the 1970s, then was congressional correspondent for more than a decade while contributing to The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS. Until her death, she served as a part-time political commentator for NPR.

The Washington Post

Cokie Roberts