STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) — Jack Bausman, a Cold War-era correspondent and former Moscow bureau chief for The Associated Press, has died, his daughter said Friday. He was 92.
Bausman died Thursday at a hospital in Stamford, Mary-Fred Bausman-Watkins said. He had heart surgery in April and never fully recovered, she said.
Bausman arrived in Moscow as the news agency’s bureau chief in July 1968, about a month before the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. He also reported from Frankfurt, Germany, from Warsaw, Poland, and from Budapest, Hungary, during a four-decade career with the AP, including his four years in Moscow.
“Jack covered some of the most important spots in the Cold War era, the Soviet Union and an economically and politically resurgent Germany, always bringing context, thoughtfulness and an almost scholarly approach to his work,” said Claude Erbsen, a retired AP vice president and director of world services. “He brought the same characteristics to bear in his administrative work at AP headquarters.”
Bausman, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, joined the AP in Newark, New Jersey, in 1950 after graduating from Harvard University, serving with the U.S. Army in France and Germany during World War II and writing for newspapers in Pennsylvania.
A highlight for him was covering President Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow in 1972, Bausman-Watkins said.
“The experience of seeing the Cold War from four different countries with different experiences made him a well-rounded journalist,” she said.
In retirement, Bausman lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, and traveled to China for extended periods of time with his wife, Evelyn Bausman, to teach journalism.
Besides his wife and daughter, he is survived by two sons.
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