RIP - Garrick Utley

Robert Feder tells us that Garrick Utley, the son of a pioneering Chicago television news couple, began as a copy boy for the Chicago Sun-Times and rose to prominence as a globe-trotting correspondent for three networks, moderator of “Meet the Press” and weekend anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and “Sunday Today.”

Utley, who was 74, died of prostate cancer Thursday at his home in New York, according to family. He passed “with the same grace and dignity he showed throughout his life and career,” said Utley’s sister-in-law, Chicago journalist Carol Marin.

Utley joined NBC News in 1963 as an assistant to John Chancellor in the network’s Brussels bureau. The following year, he was assigned to the Saigon bureau, where he was among the first television correspondents to cover the Vietnam War. He went on to report from more than 70 countries, winning numerous honors including an Edward R. Murrow Award and George Foster Peabody Award.