Daniel Perkes, Former AP Exec, Dies at 73

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(AP) Daniel N. Perkes, a longtime Associated Press newsman who retired as an assistant general manager and vice president and then returned to reporting at a newspaper, died of cancer Tuesday. He was 73.

Perkes, who retired from the AP in 1989 after 32 years, died at his home in East Orleans, Mass., his family said.

Popular with AP member newspaper publishers and those who worked for him, Perkes was a convivial and gregarious executive who kept close to his reporter roots.

After retiring from AP, he worked in public relations at New York's NYU Medical Center and later as a reporter for The Cape Codder newspaper in Orleans, Mass. A recent article on the editorial page of The Cape Codder noted that Perkes joined the staff because he wanted to be a reporter again, ""because that is what he truly enjoys doing.""

Born in New York, Perkes served in the Air Force in Texas and then started working for the Lubbock (Texas) Morning Avalanche. He joined the AP in Lincoln, Neb., in 1957 and quickly moved on to Des Moines, Iowa, where he was statehouse correspondent. He then worked in Pierre, S.D., and Oklahoma City, Okla., where he was chief of bureau, before returning to Des Moines to head that bureau.

He transferred to APNewsfeatures in New York, where he spent 20 years as director of APN, managing AP's feature, books and filmstrip service.

Survivors include his wife, Noni, a clinical nurse specializing in psychiatric nursing; son, Daniel, 43; daughter, Kim, 47, and six grandchildren. A previous wife, Norma, predeceased him.

Services will be held Friday at Our Lady of the Cape in Brewster, Mass.