George Esper | War correspondent, 79

George Esper, 79, a tenacious Associated Press correspondent who refused to leave his post in the last days of the Vietnam War and remained behind to cover the fall of Saigon, died in his sleep Thursday night, his son, Thomas, told the AP on Friday.

Mr. Esper logged 10 years in Vietnam, the last two as AP's bureau chief.

While he considered his coverage of the 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. Mr. Esper was legendary for his persistence in covering news in war and in peace.

Born in Uniontown, Pa., in 1932, Mr. 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 the Uniontown Morning Herald and the Pittsburgh Press, AP hired him in 1958, first in Philadelphia, then in New York City.

In 1965, Mr. Esper joined AP's growing Saigon staff. Other than a return to New York for several months in 1966, he stayed to the end.

Mr. 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.

Two North Vietnamese soldiers entered the bureau, accompanied by a longtime freelance photographer for the AP who that day revealed that he had been a communist spy. He assured the reporters that they were safe. Mr. Esper interviewed the soldiers. Hours later, AP's communications were abruptly cut, but not before the story got out. The New York Times ran it on its front page.

On his return to the United States, Mr. Esper became an AP special correspondent, the news service's highest writing title, based in Columbus, Ohio, and later in Boston. He covered stories such as the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978 and the 1991 Gulf war.

Mr. Esper retired from the AP in 2000 to become a professor of journalism at his alma mater, West Virginia University.

"He loved his students, who kept him young," Thomas Esper said. - AP