Obituaries:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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NAJI, AHMED HADI — The body of Ahmed Hadi Naji, an Associated Press employee, was found shot in the back of the head Jan. 5, 2007 in Baghdad. He was 28.

The circumstances of Naji's death were unclear. He was last seen leaving for work six days ago by his family.

Naji was the fourth AP staffer to die violently in the Iraq war and the second AP employee killed in less than a month. He had been a messenger and occasional cameraman for the AP for 2 1/2 years.

Naji's wife, Sahba'a Mudhar Khalil, reported him missing Dec. 30 when he did not return that evening. He had left home by motorcycle in the Ashurta Al Khamsa District in southwest Baghdad at 10:30 a.m., telling her he was going to the AP office. Naji's body was found in a morgue.

NASH (Jr.), HARRY C. — Nash became known during World War II for reporting the devastation wrought by German submarines on U.S. Merchant shipping off the Atlantic coast.

Packs of German submarines would wait outside Virginia's port of Hampton Roads for freighters and tankers to emerge into the Atlantic. As the convoys entered the open sea, the subs attacked, with flashes of gunfire and explosions often visible on land. Nash recruited coastal residents to call him at such times, and then he tracked down and interviewed survivors.

Nash died Jan. 22, 2000 in his native Portsmouth, Va. He was 92.

He worked part-time for The Virginian-Pilot newspaper while attending Georgetown University. He joined the AP at Richmond and transferred later to Norfolk.

Survivors include his wife, a daughter and a son.

NASSAR, FAROUK — a 42-year-veteran Mideast correspondent for The Associated Press, died Dec. 26, 2005, in Beirut, Lebanon. He was 79.

Nassar died two weeks after suffering a stroke, according to his son, Firas. He was stricken after learning of the Dec. 12 car bomb assassination of Gibran Tueni, editor and general manager of Beirut's leading daily, An-Nahar.

He was supervisor of the newspaper's English-language Web site after retiring from AP in 1996.

During his AP service, Nassar covered military coups in neighboring Syria, where he started reporting for the AP.

From Damascus and later his Beirut base, his monitoring of shortwave radio broadcasts earned him wide credits for reporting earthshaking political developments in the Middle East -- including the 1958 overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq, the 1969 takeover by military officer Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and the conflict in Yemen.

He was jailed several times in Syria for his reporting. He moved with his family to Lebanon in the mid-1960s.

He covered the Palestinian fighters who set up a base in Lebanon in the 1970s, frequently interviewing their leaders, and reported throughout Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, the Syrian army intervention, the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978 and the wider Israeli invasion of 1982 and its occupation of Beirut.

Among the bulletins he filed during his career was the bombing of the U.S. Marine base in Beirut in 1983, an attack that killed more than 240 American service personnel.

NEAKIRY, OU — the longtime AP photographer died Nov. 1, 2005 after a long illness in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was 53.

Neakiry survived the battlefields of the Cambodian War and Pol Pot's killing fields. Kry, as he was generally known, joined the AP as an office assistant during the Cambodian war, when the AP hired a sizeable corps of Cambodian photographers and field reporters to cover the brutal conflict. 

Bangkok Chief of Bureau Denis Gray says that when the Khmer Rouge surrounded Phnom Penh in 1975, Neakiry -- along with all the other Cambodians working for the AP -- declined offers to be evacuated. Most perished in the genocidal regime that followed but Neakiry survived four years of agony in the rice fields.

By chance, Neakiry was reunited with Gray on assignment in Cambodia after the fall of the ultras and began to submit photos again. In 1995, Neakiry was re-hired full-time and for a time provided the bulk of AP's high quality photo coverage from Cambodia.

Another close brush with death came in 1998, when the helicopter Neakiry was riding crashed into a minefield in northwestern Cambodia. He is survived by his wife and two young children.

NELSON, GERRY— Former Associated Press newsman Gerry Nelson, who covered Minnesota politics for nearly two decades and then became press secretary to Gov. Rudy Perpich, died February 14, 2004, in Minneapolis at the age of 73.

Nelson died at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale of apparent complications from pneumonia, his wife, JoAnn, said.

Nelson went to work for The Associated Press in 1954 at the news service's Fargo, N.D., bureau. He later covered North Dakota politics in Bismarck before transferring to Minneapolis in 1960. He was named St. Paul correspondent in 1965.

"I remember him saying he regarded it more as a calling than a job," said retired AP newsman Gene Lahammer, who worked with Nelson in a tiny office at the Capitol for 12 years.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who was state attorney general in the 1960s and later became a U.S. senator from Minnesota, remembered Nelson as the most important political reporter of his day.

"He was a very good reporter, smart. He was energetic. He was always around," Mondale said.

Nelson had a reputation for nonpartisanship and both Republican and Democratic governors tried to hire him. He left the AP in late 1982 to become Perpich's press secretary.

"I don't know of any elected official who disliked Gerry," said former Gov. Wendell Anderson, a Democrat who also tried to hire Nelson. "He might probe and write something you wouldn't be happy with, but they normally hit the mark."

"He was a reporter's reporter," said retired Star Tribune political reporter Betty Wilson. "He was very bright, gutsy. He had a lot of integrity."

After serving as Perpich's spokesman, Nelson left to become spokesman for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. He retired in 1996 but remained active as a volunteer at the Plymouth City Hall communications office.

In 1997, Nelson was awarded the David L. Graven Award for lifetime contribution to Minnesota journalism at the annual Frank Premack Memorial Journalism Awards, given in honor of Frank Premack, a Minneapolis Tribune reporter and editor who died in 1975.

Besides his wife of 46 years, survivors include a son, a daughter and a sister.

NORTON, MICHAEL— Former Associated Press Haiti correspondent Michael Norton died of cancer Sunday, June 15, 2008, at the age of 66. His wife said he died in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where they lived. Read Paisley Dodds' June 15 AP story below.

Former AP Haiti correspondent Michael Norton dies

By PAISLEY DODDS
Associated Press Writer

Michael Norton -- who spent nearly two decades covering Haiti's coups, rebellions and disasters for The Associated Press -- died Sunday after a long battle with cancer. He was 66.

Norton chronicled the turmoil that followed former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier's ouster, spent almost a decade watching the rise and fall of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and wrote compelling accounts of Haiti's crushing poverty that has created a cycle of despair in the country.

His wife said he died in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where they lived.

Born in Minneapolis, Norton left the United States in 1969 for Ireland, but soon moved to Paris, where he found work as an English teacher and fell in love with Haitian singer and activist, Toto Bissainthe.

The couple moved to Haiti in 1986, just months after "Baby Doc" Duvalier was forced into exile following a popular uprising. Bissainthe died in 1994.

Known for his trademark ponytail and corncob pipe, Norton began working for the AP in 1988 after hosting a series of local radio shows in English, French and Haitian Creole.

For many journalists who covered Haiti, a visit to Norton's house on the outskirts of Petionville was one of the first steps toward understanding Haiti's turbulent undercurrent.

Unlike many who covered Haiti from hotels, Norton lived like many Haitians -- struggling through power cuts, water shortages, street violence and constant political upheaval.

"I swore I would never sacrifice the truth to any cause, no matter how good," Norton recently recalled of his time in Haiti.

It was this conviction that often enraged Haiti's power brokers.
In 2004, when anti-Aristide groups reported a turnout of 60,000 people at a protest in Port-au-Prince, the capital, Norton stuck to his principles.

Using police standards for counting crowds, he reported a far lower number. The result: death threats, angry mobs and Norton's name singled out on opposition radio programs.

David Beard, who was the AP's Caribbean news editor from 1992 to 1995, said Norton "helped a generation of readers worldwide understand the despair, joy, and mysteries" of Haiti.
"His diligence and respect for the nation translated as well for writers, reporters, and policymakers who followed his path," Beard said in an e-mail from Boston, where he works as editor of The Boston Globe's Web site.

Norton tirelessly covered Haiti until the end, leaving with a final scoop.

Through sources he had built over 20 years, Norton was the first journalist to report that Aristide was ousted Feb. 29, 2004, after a three-week revolt led by gangs and former soldiers.

He left soon after to seek medical attention for a melanoma that had returned.

"He sustained me through difficult times with unconditional friendship," said Dan Whitman, a friend of Norton's who worked at the U.S. Embassy in 1999-2001. "Though our professions put information to somewhat different purposes, we had an identical interest in accuracy."|

Norton's most colorful stories came from covering Haiti's regular Voodoo pilgrimages. The religion was officially sanctioned during his time in the country.

"We just lost a Haitian journalist, someone who belonged to us," said Joseph Guyler Delva, a Haitian reporter who heads an association of local journalists and recalled Norton's fluency in Haitian Creole, a blend of French and African words and syntax. He said Norton, who was white, was never considered a "foreign" correspondent by Haitians.

Norton joined the AP's San Juan bureau in 2004, returning to Haiti briefly in 2006, to cover the election of Rene Preval as president.

He retired months later, listening to jazz and writing poetry until the end.

He penned several books, including "And When the Weeds Began to Grow," and his latest, "Eschatology," which was published this year. Another book, written in Spanish, was titled, "A quien pueda interesar" or "To Whom It May Concern."

He often said two books that captured Haiti best were "Alice in Wonderland" and "Exodus."

"You can't piece together points of view," Norton said in 2007 of writing about Haiti.

"You can stack them or align them. But that is like bringing together all the trees in the forest, which becomes impenetrable, like forging a fence from wooden planks. You have to depend on your own intuition, your own capacity to enter into another world, to fall with Alice (in Wonderland) down the hole and subsequently not to lose your sanity or be persnickety about the incomprehensible."

Norton is survived by his wife, Domnina Alcantara de los Santos.
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Paisley Dodds was the AP's Caribbean news editor from 2000 to 2005.