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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RIES, ANGELA — Angela Ries, a longtime administrative assistant for The Associated Press bureau in Vienna, died Dec. 13, 2007 in Vienna. She was 98.

In a note announcing her death, Vienna Chief of Bureau Bill Kole wrote: "Some of you may remember Frau Ries, who worked tirelessly for the AP in Vienna for 32 years before retiring in 1984. She kept the Vienna bureau running through scores of top stories including the Hungarian Revolution, the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, and modern Austrian statehood in 1955."

Kole cited a note former AP Vice President Claude Erbsen sent to Ries in 1984 wishing her a healthy and happy retirement: "Vienna AP without Angela Ries will be like the Sacher Hotel without Sacher Torte. Or Viennese coffee without schlag."

Director of the AP Corporate Archives Valerie Komor visited the Vienna bureau in August 2004 and conducted an oral history with Ries in her Vienna apartment. Komor says: "It was the first oral history I conducted for the AP, and it was with a woman whose life had spanned several epochs in modern European history. The thread that ran through several hours of conversation was her devotion to the AP."


RIPPINGER, ALBERT — Former managing director of AP's German-language service Al Rippinger has died at the age of 66 in Germany. "He was always there for his colleagues and customers, and contributed through his work significantly to the economic success of the AP," said Oliver Lux, the general manager of The Associated Press GmbH. "With Al Rippinger the AP family loses a valued member. We will all remember him," Lux said of Rippinger, who remained a consultant for the company after he retired in October 2005. Read Rippinger's Nov. 10 AP obituary below.

Former managing director of AP Germany dies

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Albert Rippinger, a former managing director of The Associated Press in Germany, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 66.

Rippinger died in a hospital in Trier early Sunday morning, said Oliver Lux, the general manager of The Associated Press GmbH, the AP's German-language operation.

"We all know Mr. Rippinger as a dedicated, conscientious and personable colleague, for whom the AP was far more than just a place of work," Lux said Monday.

"He was always there for his colleagues and customers, and contributed through his work significantly to the economic success of the AP. With Al Rippinger the AP family loses a valued member. We will all remember him."

Born in 1941 in Luxembourg, Rippinger began his career as a German and French teacher in the German city of Bitburg.

He worked for the U.S. biotechnology firm Monsanto Co. starting in 1965, leaving in 1984 to join The AP in Frankfurt.

He worked there as the head of sales until 2004 when he took over as managing director until his retirement in October, 2005. Rippinger oversaw the AP's German Service whose clients and subscribers are in Germany, Switzerland, central and east Europe and elsewhere.

He remained a consultant for the company after his retirement.

Rippinger is survived by his wife Christel.

RIVERA, LAURA — died Sept. 30, 2005 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she was an AP journalist. She was 23. Rivera had been with AP Puerto Rico's Spanish-language service since 2003.

Laura Noelia Rivera Melendez was born in Puerto Rico and graduated with the highest honors from the University of Puerto Rico in 2002. She was included in the 2003 Who's Who Among American Students. She had studied communications, journalism and photography, played on the varsity basketball team, and won the Campus Athlete of the Year award in 2002. She had also pursued her passion for the theater, joining the Grupo de Teatro en las Calles Jovenes del '98.

She was snapped up by Puerto Rico's most respected newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, and worked there as a reporter and editor until she joined the AP in 2003.

Thousands of people went to her memorial, wanting to honor her and comfort her parents, Rosario "Charo" Melendez and Jose Rivera, her sister Patricia and fiancé Enrique Lamoutt. Mourners lined up for one and a-half hours to pay tribute to her, and hundreds had to stand outside because there was not enough space in the funeral home.

ROBINSON, HARRY B. — spent all of his AP career in the New York office, but in retirement, moved to Florida. He died Sept. 4, 1999 at his retirement home in Sebring. He was 85.

Robinson joined the AP in 1941 and was assistant communications manager when he retired in 1979. Survivors include his wife, one son, two daughters and a brother.

RODEN, RALPH — a charter member of AP's Half-Century Club for staffers with at least 50 years of service, died at age 77.

An exacting editor whose benign presence graced the New York desks of The Associated Press for more than a half century, Roden began his AP career as a copy boy in the financial news department in 1941, working part time while finishing high school. The following year he moved to a full-time job in sports where he worked until he went into the Army in 1943.

He returned to AP in 1946 and was promoted from copy boy to newsman. His first assignment was handling baseball statistics — a perfect fit for the lifelong baseball fan whose passion for the St. Louis Cardinals would never abate.

RODERICK, JOHN — longtime AP China-watcher John Roderick died Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in Hawaii. He was 93. He spent his last days in his Honolulu apartment gathering friends for final farewells, smiling and nodding when his weakened condition from heart failure and pneumonia prevented speech. Roderick's family says a memorial service will be held at Hosoi Garden Mortuary on Monday, March 17, at 10 a.m., followed by internment of cremated remains at Punchbowl at 11:30 a.m.

Read the March 11, 2008 AP story below:

Longtime Associated Press China-watcher John Roderick dies at 93

By DAVID BRISCOE
Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU (AP) -- John Roderick, an Associated Press correspondent who covered the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong and other Communist guerrilla leaders while living with them in their cave headquarters in the mid-1940s, has died. He was 93.

Roderick died Tuesday morning, friends and family said. He spent his last days in his Honolulu apartment gathering friends for final farewells, smiling and nodding when his weakened condition from heart failure and pneumonia prevented speech.

He was an avid journalist to the end, completing a memoir about his restored farmhouse in Kamakura, Japan, and writing his final piece for AP last month, a personal reflection.

"To my old eyes," he wrote in his Feb. 18 report, "it seems almost a miracle that China has survived the pain and bloodshed to emerge from poverty and become one of the richest of Earth's nations in so short a time."

Roderick was a leading China-watcher for decades, covering the country from its pre-revolution days to the economic reforms of the 1980s. Reporting on Chinese events from the outside in the years after Mao's victory in China's civil war, he reopened AP's bureau in Beijing in 1979.

Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai once praised Roderick as the journalist who "opened the door" to China for foreign news media.

"John was equal part lion and bon vivant. The result was a courageous reporter, elegant writer and marvelous storyteller," said AP President and CEO Tom Curley. "He inspired generations of younger AP correspondents, and his loss is deeply felt."

Ted Anthony, the AP's China news editor from 2002 to 2004, recalled: "He would always tell us, 'Keep learning. If you ever think you understand China completely, it's time to go home.'"

In his final years, Roderick lived part of the year in the Japanese farmhouse restored for him by his adopted son, Yoshihiro Takishita, who with his wife, Reiko, remained part of John's family for life.

In 2007, Princeton Architectural Press brought out Roderick's book "Minka: My Farmhouse in Japan," about the unusual 273-year-old farmhouse. The house became a show place visited by the elder George Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the queens of Denmark and Greece and others.

Roderick's career with AP spanned five decades with postings in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. In 1977 he was named an AP special correspondent -- one of only a handful -- and in 1985 the Japanese government honored him with its Order of the Sacred Treasure.

"We don't suffer from boredom in this business," he said in an interview at his home in Kamakura, south of Tokyo, in 1996. "We are very lucky, I think, to be in touch with history -- what people are doing and telling their stories."

China was his passion, and a high point in his life came when as a 31-year-old reporter he spent seven months living among the Communist rebel leadership in their capital, Yan'an, in central China between 1945 and 1947.

"Going to Yan'an and meeting all those people was a turning point," Roderick said. "It was a break for me."

The city was flattened by Japanese bombers in 1938, and by the mid-1940s was a dusty honeycomb of thousands of caves dug out of the loess hills on the edge of the Gobi Desert. Mao and his Communists had gathered in the city in 1935, at the end of their "Long March" across China to escape their Nationalist Chinese foes.

In his book, "Covering China," Roderick detailed how at meals, during dances and in conversations he took stock of Mao, Zhou Enlai and other top Communists -- men who would soon rule the most populous nation on Earth.

"I admired the fact that they were trying to do something for the poor Chinese," he said. His opinion of Mao, though, soured with the brutality of Communist rule and the failure of Communist policies.

Roderick lived as his neighbors did in Yan'an -- in a tiny cave dwelling, where he slept on a makeshift bed and sand-filled pillow and banged out AP stories on his portable typewriter beside a charcoal-burning brazier.

Photos from the time show the broad-jawed Roderick wearing a long parka as defense against the desert cold, wincing in the sun as he posed with battle-hardened guerrillas.

After Yan'an, Roderick covered the breakdown of peace talks between the Communists and Nationalists and the ensuing Chinese civil war from Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing.

In 1948 he arrived in Amman, Jordan, two weeks after the creation of Israel and scored a world beat of four hours on the assassination of the United Nations peace negotiator, Count Folke Bernadotte, by Israeli extremists in Jerusalem.

Afterward he spent time in London and five years in Paris in the 1950s. He covered the fall of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, in 1954. After subsequent postings in Hong Kong and Paris, Roderick returned to Asia for good.

It was during this time that Roderick became the consummate China-watcher, studying Communist news dispatches from afar and working sources for scraps of information about what was going on behind the blinds that Mao had drawn over his country.

"My years of covering China from a distance were fascinating, frustrating and obsessive," he wrote in "Covering China." "One lived the story 24 hours a day; nothing else mattered."

After a couple of false starts, the chance to return to the country that enchanted him finally came in 1971, when Roderick accompanied the U.S. pingpong team on an unprecedented trip to China -- the first time Americans had been invited by Beijing since 1949.

Born in 1914, in Waterville, Maine, Roderick was orphaned at 16. His career in journalism began at 15 at his hometown newspaper, the Sentinel. He joined AP in Portland in 1937 after graduating from Colby College.

In 1942 he moved to AP's office in Washington, D.C. The following year he was drafted into the Army, assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, and was sent to Kunming, capital of China's Yunnan province. After the war, he hooked up again with AP.

A year after reopening AP's Beijing bureau, Roderick returned to Tokyo in 1980 as a special correspondent and roamed Asia, reporting on whatever story caught his interest. He retired -- prematurely, he later said -- in 1984 at age 70.

After his retirement he continued to write background stories for AP on China and the Middle East, and also wrote about his own 92nd birthday in 2006, which AP celebrated with a champagne lunch in New York. That year he began a series of monthly China-related articles on the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

A memorial service was set for Monday in Honolulu. Always the journalist, Roderick gave a close read to a draft of this obituary.
"My compliments ... for the obit," he said. "It's worth dying for."
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Associated Press writer Joseph Coleman in Tokyo contributed to this report.

ROGERS, WARREN — who covered the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war as well as writing five historical books, died September 1, 2003. He was 81.

Rogers, who had been working recently as a freelance writer supplying columns to a number of publications, died 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.

RONCERO, FRANCISCO DIAZ — a longtime AP correspondent who devoted more than 70 years of his life to journalism and never retired, died in Paris June 18, 1999 at age 93.

Diaz Roncero was nearly finished with a book about his life, entitled: "My First 70 Years."

He began working for the AP in Madrid in 1926. He left for several years to work as a political editor at Ahora and later as press chief for Spain's Gen. Jose Miaja.

Roncero was in France when the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939. He remained in France and joined the Havas news agency, providing his countrymen the only source of uncensored news.

During World War II he joined an underground resistance group made up of journalists. After the war he rejoined Havas, which later became Agence-France Presse. He rejoined the AP in the Paris bureau in 1969.

Diaz Roncero covered the Cannes Film Festival 51 times. He received numerous awards during his career, including France's Legion of Honor and the Order of Arts and Letters.

He is survived by a daughter.

ROSE, JUDD — a former AP broadcast newsman and Emmy-winning investigative reporter for CNN and ABC died June 10, 2000 of brain cancer in New York. He was 45.

Rose won four Emmy awards, including honors for his coverage of Princess Diana's funeral and the fall of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos. He was an anchor of "NewsStand," and an anchor of "CNN & Entertainment Weekly," which preceded "NewsStand." He reported from Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.

Rose joined ABC in 1982. He also worked for the AP's broadcast service, NBC radio and two Los Angeles television stations.

Survivors include his wife, a son and a daughter.

ROSE, MURRAY — AP sports writer and editor for 46 years and one of the country's best known boxing journalists during his career, died May 31, 1999 in New York. He was 84.

Rose, who retired in 1979, covered fights and fighters from Joe Louis to Muhammad Ali for four decades. He teamed with the late Jack Hand at ringside for scores of championship fights, and the two won awards for their coverage from the Boxing Writers Association. He also was an integral part of the AP's Olympic staff and covered international sports on every continent except Antarctica.

Rose joined the AP in 1934 as a copy boy. He worked in a number of New York departments before settling in sports. He spent many years running the AP's night sports desk, directing coverage of breaking news stories. At the end of his career, he directed special projects.

Survivors include his wife and a son.


ROSENBERG, MORRIS W. — who worked as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief during a 30-year career with The Associated Press, died Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007, in Chapel Hill, N.C., of prostate cancer, his family said. He was 87.

Rosenberg joined the AP in 1959 as World Services news editor and two years later was assigned as chief of bureau for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

He moved to Paris in 1966 to become chief of bureau there, before returning to Mexico City in 1977 as AP director general for operations in Latin America.

Rosenberg retired from the AP in 1988 after serving as chief of World Services operations in the AP's Washington, D.C., bureau.

He then served as a media consultant for news agencies and other organizations in the newly established countries of Eastern Europe after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He also helped direct journalism training in Central America.

Rosenberg is survived by his wife of 61 years, two daughters, a brother and two grandchildren.


ROSENTHAL, JOE — The Associated Press photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima died Aug. 20, 2006 in Novato, Calif. He was 94.

Rosenthal's iconic photo, shot on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The photo was listed in 1999 at No. 68 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.

It shows the second raising of the flag that day on Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island. The first flag had been deemed too small.

"What I see behind the photo is what it took to get up to those heights — the kind of devotion to their country that those young men had, and the sacrifices they made," Rosenthal once said. "I take some gratification in being a little part of what the U.S. stands for."

The small island of Iwo Jima was a strategic piece of land 750 miles south of Tokyo, and the United States wanted it to support long-range B-29 bombers and a possible invasion of Japan.

On Feb. 19, 1945, 30,000 Marines landed on the southeast coast. Mount Suribachi, at 546 feet the highest point on the island, took four days for the troops to scale. In all, more than 6,800 U.S. servicemen died in the five-week battle for the island, and the 21,000-man Japanese defense force was virtually wiped out.

Ten years after the flag-raising, Rosenthal wrote that he almost didn't go up to the summit when he learned a flag had already been raised. He decided to go up anyway, and found servicemen preparing to plant the second, larger flag.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know."

"Millions of Americans saw this picture five or six days before I did, and when I first heard about it, I had no idea what picture was meant."

He recalled that days later, when a colleague congratulated him on the picture, he thought he meant another, posed shot he had taken later that day, of Marines waving and cheering at the base of the flag.

He added that if he had posed the flag-raising picture, as some skeptics have suggested over the years, "I would, of course, have ruined it" by choosing fewer men and making sure their faces could be seen.

The AP photo quickly became the subject of posters, war-bond drives and a U.S. postage stamp.

Rosenthal left the AP later in 1945 to join the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked as a photographer for 35 years before retiring.

"He was short in stature but that was about it. He had a lot of nerve," said John O'Hara, a retired photographer who worked with Rosenthal at the San Francisco Chronicle.

O'Hara said Rosenthal took special pride in a certificate naming him an honorary Marine and remained spry and alert well into his 90s.

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Sept. 15, 2006

Iwo Jima photographer awarded posthumous Navy medal

By LISA LEFF
Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who captured the enduring World War II image of six battle-weary men raising the American flag over Iwo Jima, was posthumously awarded a Navy medal for distinguished public service.

Presenting the medal to Rosenthal's children along with a pair of flags from the Marine Corps War Memorial, inspired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Mike Lehnert said Friday the iconic photograph still inspired generations of Marines.

Rosenthal, who was 94 when he died in Northern California on Aug. 20, created "a true representation of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity and death," Lehnert said.

Other Marines, fellow Pulitzer Prize winners and family members also tried capturing in words what Rosenthal's most famous work caught with the click of his shutter on Feb. 23, 1945, as a 33-year-old combat photographer for The Associated Press.

With the black-and-white image projected on a screen, former White House photographer David Hume Kennedy read tribute letters from two former presidents who served during World War II, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.

Bush, who recalled seeing the flag-raising photo in the newspaper as a Navy pilot, said that without the shot of pride it instilled, the war might have dragged on even longer.

"I wonder if Joe fully appreciated what this photograph meant, and what it still means to the American people," Bush wrote.

Kennedy said that even though Rosenthal disliked the limelight and humbly continued working as a photojournalist for 33 years after the war, his mentor's "one iconic tableau, frozen in time" cast a big shadow.

"That picture has been there at every stage of my career, whispering in my ear, 'You can shoot far bigger and far better,'" he said. "It is the Gettysburg Address of photos. ... That photo hangs in the hearts of us all."

RUBENS, WALTER L. — former owner and general manager of radio station KOBE/KOPE in Las Cruces and member of The Associated Press board of directors, died September 23, 2002 after a long illness. He was 75.

Rubens was appointed to the AP board in 1976, one of the first broadcast members with full voting power. At the time, he was president-elect of The Associated Press Broadcasters Inc. He served on the corporate board until 1979.

"He was very active in broadcast affairs nationally and in the state," said Howard Graves, New Mexico AP bureau chief from 1962-76. "He ran one of the most aggressive news stations in the state."

Rubens, who was born in Chicago, served in the United States Naval Reserve from 1944-46. After the war, he attended Wesleyan University. He worked for several radio stations in Chicago and Houston before becoming the owner and general manager of KJET in Beaumont, Texas. In 1964, he moved to Las Cruces and purchased KOBE/KOPE.

"He was a great competitor," said Larry Morgan of Alamogordo, who was news director of rival station KGRT in Las Cruces. "He was a tough competitor, but he was a kind friend."

Rubens also was a member of the New Mexico Broadcasters Association and was a director of the New Mexico State University Aggies Sports Association. He was president-elect of the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce, a founding member of the Rio Grande Rotary Club and a member of the Republican State Central Committee.

He is survived by his brother, Charles Rubens of Scarsdale, N.Y.; four daughters, Kathleen Sweetland of Albuquerque, Sheila Gardenhire of Las Cruces, Patricia Nelson of Dallas and Diane Jewkes of Conifer, Colo.; a son, Michael Rubens, of Las Cruces; and six grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Sept. 25 at Graham Mortuary Chapel in Las Cruces.

RUTTER, MARY — a retired editor for the AP in Kansas City, Mo., died Oct. 20, 2000 in Overland Park, Kan. She was 86.

Rutter, who joined the AP in 1942, worked at bureaus in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, La., and Jackson, Miss., before transferring to Kansas City in 1944. She retired in 1978.

She had worked as a reporter for the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World and the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American before embarking on a 36-year career with the AP.