George Esper, AP reporter in Vietnam, dies

George Esper, the tenacious Associated Press correspondent who refused to leave his post in the last days of the Vietnam War, remaining behind to cover the fall of Saigon, has died. He was 79.

Esper, who suffered from a number of ailments, especially serious heart issues, died in his sleep Thursday night, said his son, Thomas.

Esper earned accolades for breaking important stories and logged 10 years in Vietnam, the last two as AP's bureau chief. He regularly wrote the daily war roundup, a comprehensive story that was a fixture in many newspapers.

While he considered his coverage of the dramatic end of the 15-year Indochina conflict the high point in a 42-year career of deadline reporting, it was far from the only one. Esper was legendary for his dogged persistence in covering news in war and in peace.

"You don't want to be obnoxious and you don't want to stalk people, but I think persistence pays off," Esper said in 2000.

So when he was assigned to write a story for the 20th anniversary of the 1970 shootings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and could find no phone number for the mother of one victim, Esper drove an hour through a snowstorm to knock on her door.

"She just kind of waved me off, and she said, 'We're not giving any interviews.' Just like that," Esper recalled. "I didn't really push her. On the other hand, I didn't turn around and leave. I just kind of stood there, wet with snow, dripping wet and cold, and I think she kind of took pity on me." Like so many others over the years, she opened up to Esper.

Born in Uniontown, Pa., Esper tried to become a sports announcer but was fired after two weeks for what his boss called "butchering the English language." After writing sports for two newspapers, AP hired him in 1958.

In 1965, as the U.S. military in Vietnam shifted from an advisory role to deploying full combat divisions, Esper joined AP's growing Saigon staff. Other than a return to New York for several months in 1966, he stayed to the end.

Esper wrote his most memorable story on April 30, 1975, the day the war ended with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. He and two other AP reporters declined to join the frantic evacuation of foreigners from Saigon as the North Vietnamese army drove toward the city.

Two North Vietnamese soldiers entered the bureau, accompanied by a longtime freelance photographer for the AP who on that day revealed that he had been a communist spy. He assured the reporters they were safe. Esper offered them Coca-Cola and stale cake -- the only food on hand -- then interviewed the soldiers. Hours later, AP's communications were abruptly cut, but not before the story got out.

Esper said afterward he was struck by how similar the young Hanoi soldiers were to the American GIs he had covered.

On his return to the United States, Esper covered major stories such as the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978 and the 1991 Gulf War. In 1993, he was chosen to open AP's first postwar Vietnam bureau in Hanoi and was bureau chief for more than a year.