Richard Valeriani (1932–2018)

Richard Gerard Valeriani was born in Camden, New Jersey on August 29, 1932. He received a bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1953 and master's degrees from the University of Pavia in Italy and the University of Barcelona. After being drafted, he served as an Army translator in Germany. After toon meer he was discharged, he joined The Associated Press as a reporter and worked there for almost three years. NBC hired him away from The Associated Press while he was covering the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. He went on to become a correspondent for NBC Nightly News and, for a few years in the 1970s, a co-anchor of Today from Washington. He covered the White House at some point during every administration from John F. Kennedy's to George H. W. Bush's. He also had stints covering the State Department and the Pentagon. He wrote a book about travelling around the world with secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger entitled Travels with Henry, which was published in 1979. He left NBC News in 1988 and became a media trainer. In 1995, he played a CNN reporter in the film Crimson Tide. He died from chronic heart failure on June 18, 2018 at the age of 85. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder