Longtime AP State Dept. reporter George Gedda, 82
WASHINGTON — George Gedda, a workhorse veteran of the Associated Press whose coverage of the State Department and international relations spanned more than four decades and who played a major role in explaining US foreign policy to the American public from Vietnam to Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, has died. He was 82.
Mr. Gedda was also the author of three books — one on his time as an AP diplomatic correspondent, one on Cuba’s Communist revolution, and one on his first love, baseball. He died Sunday while in hospice care in Altamonte Springs, Fla., said Ellen James Martin, his former partner of 14 years. The cause was bladder cancer, she said.
Mr. Gedda had retired to central Florida in 2007 after a 41year career at the AP, most of which was in Washington, beginning during Lyndon Johnson’s administration and not ending until George W. Bush was president.
During his time in Washington, Mr. Gedda covered every secretary of state from Dean Rusk to Condoleezza Rice, and carved out a niche for himself as an expert on Latin America and Cuba.
“You are a first-class professional and a role model for many who will follow you,” Rice said in a handwritten note to Mr. Gedda on his retirement.
From his perch at the State Department, the soft-spoken and unfailingly polite and patient Mr. Gedda made himself an invaluable partner for both fellow AP reporters and competitors, including his often irascible colleague and officemate, the late and legendary AP diplomatic correspondent Barry Schweid.
“For more than 30 years, George Gedda and I worked harmoniously and effectively together at the State Department covering the world for the AP,” Schweid said when Mr. Gedda retired. “He simply knew more than anyone else about the issues. And a lot of what he knew was stored in his mind, a bank of knowledge I found myself calling on regularly, especially in pressure situations.
“No member of the State Department press corps was more respected,” said Schweid, who passed away in 2015. “No AP colleague was more selfless in sharing information and the workload. He was simply the best.”
Mr. Gedda made 31 trips to Cuba, most of which were reporting visits for the AP beginning in 1974. He was instrumental in the agency’s creation of its first bureau in Havana since the 1960s in 1999, and he used those experiences as the basis for his 2011 book, “Cuba: The Audacious Revolution.”