Journalist Warren Rogers Dies at 81

By: (AP) Warren Rogers, who covered the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam war as well as writing five historical books, is dead at 81.

Rogers, who had been working recently as a freelance writer supplying columns to a number of publications, died Sunday at Georgetown University Hospital of complications from cancer treatments, his family said.

Rogers, a former Associated Press correspondent, was a longtime member of the Gridiron Club, an organization of Washington journalists which exists mostly for an annual roasting of politicians.

A native of New Orleans, Rogers studied at Jesuit High School, Tulane, and Louisiana State University before joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 and serving at Guadacanal and Tulagi in World War II.

He began his journalism career at the New Orleans Morning Tribune after the war, then joined the AP in 1947, first covering Louisiana politics and then transferring to the news service's Washington bureau in 1951. In Washington, he covered the State Department, White House, and Congress, including the McCarthy hearings.

He joined the Washington bureau of the New York Herald Tribune in 1959, specializing in military and foreign affairs, and covered both the Vietnam war, making 10 trips there, and the civil rights movement in the South.

Rogers organized a Washington bureau for Hearst Newspapers in 1963 and later covered a series of national political conventions and wrote several books, including When I think of Bobby: A Personal Memoir of the Kennedy Years.

Rogers held many honors, including the Overseas Press Club of New York Citation for best reporting from Vietnam. He was president of the National Press Club in 1972 and was a founder and member of the National Press Foundation.

He is survived by his wife, Alla Rogers, two children -- Patricia Rogers Wagaman of Laurel, Md., and Sean J. Rogers -- and granddaughter Margot Hilda Cerutti.