Hal McClure Dies: Legendary Journalist Covered 2 Middle Eastern Conflicts
Long time Associated Press foreign correspondent, Hal McClure, is dead at 92 years old after complications from surgery.
McClure was pronounced deceased on Sunday after going in for a procedure to relieve a blood clot in his head at a Laguna Hills hospital.
Covering two Arab-Israeli wars, the reporter spent 21 years overseas starting in the '50s.
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An Air Force veteran, he first became interested in journalism after attending a journalism club in high school.
"When he got out of the service, his goal was to get a newspaper job and get married," said Stan Walsh, a longtime friend, reports the Associated Press.
McClure was able to secure a few small town paper jobs before being handed the reigns of a Hollywood reporter for the Associated Press.
From there he worked his way up the ranks until he landed the job he desired most- foreign correspondent.
According to AP, some of his first stories involved Malaysia, Singapore, and the disappearance of Nelson Rockefeller's son Michael in 1961 in New Guinea.
The following year he was transferred to Turkey where he could cover Israel and Cyprus, and wrote about the Pope visiting the Holy Land for the first time.
"Hal was a firm but kind employer and a good friend," said Marcus Eliason, an international editor with AP in New York. "He was steeped in the fundamentals of journalism- accuracy, fairness, speed, directness of prose, alertness to both sides of every story. He sought to instill these qualities in all the journalists who started out in his bureau, and having himself gotten into the profession on the bottom rung, he was generous in giving other neophytes opportunities to cover big stories."
Eliason was hired and trained by McClure to be the new messenger for the bureau back in the late '60s.
Upon retirement, McClure along with his wife Dorothy traveled the world as documentarians, producing films about the places they visited.
Last year he released his autobiography titled "Adventuring."
