Robert C. Pierpoint, a CBS News correspondent whose career included coverage of six presidents, the Korean War, the John F. Kennedy assassination and the Iranian hostage crisis died October 22, 2011, in California. He was 86.
According to news reports, the cause was complications from surgery at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Pierpoint had broken his hip October 12 at the Santa Barbara retirement community where he lived with his wife, Patricia.
Pierpoint was born May 16, 1925, in Redondo Beach, California. He joined the Navy in 1943 but did not see action. In 1948 he graduated from California’s University of Redlands, which now holds his papers and archives.
He entered the news field as a graduate student at the University of Stockholm, when he found work as a stringer for CBS. He garnered attention with his coverage of an attempted Communist coup in Finland, after which he was sent to Tokyo as a full-time correspondent. The assignment led to his coverage of the entire Korean War.
After beginning in radio, he moved into television in the early 1950s. He appeared on the first episode of Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now in 1951, and went on to become one of the co-called “Murrow’s Boys,” a group of correspondents who were close Murrow.
Pierpoint’s Korean War reports led to his voice playing a significant role in the most watched episode in television history. In the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983, Pierpoint’s voice on the radio reports the cease fire that marked the end of the fighting and of the long-running CBS series. Nielsen estimated the audience at 125 million viewers — a record that still stands.
His comprehensive Korean War reports led to a position as CBS White House correspondent during the Eisenhower administration, a position he held through the Carter administration.
In addition to the JFK assassination, Pierpoint covered such major stories as Watergate, the Pentagon Papers and the resignation of Richard Nixon.
He described his 23-year tenure in a 1981 memoir, At the White House.
When his White House position ended, Pierpoint moved to coverage of the State Department in 1980. He ended his career on the show Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt and retired in 1990.
During retirement he did numerous speaking engagements and spent time went fishing in Montana.
Over his career he won two Emmys with other reporters, including one for his work on a 1989 banking scandal shortly before his retirement.
He is survived by his wife, a sister and four children and five grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Charles and Emma Pierpoint Scholarship Fund at the University of Redlands, 1200 E. Colton Ave., P.O. Box 3080 Redlands, CA. 92373.