Leon Daniel, 74; Reporter Covered Vietnam War for UPI

Leon Daniel, 74, who spent nearly four decades reporting on wars, the civil rights movement and other domestic and foreign news for United Press International, died Sunday at a hospital in Glen Ellyn, Ill. Daniel had a blood clot in his lung while recovering from angioplasty, according to Judith Paterson, a retired journalism professor and his companion for the last 10 years.

Since suffering a stroke two years ago, Daniel had lived in an assisted-living facility.

“Leon was one of the most knowledgeable and boldest reporters in Vietnam,” said Peter Arnett, who covered Vietnam for Associated Press for a dozen years. “He also was among the most amiable of men.”

Daniel was one of a few foreign correspondents who remained in Saigon as South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese on April 30, 1975, and wrote the UPI flash that said, “Saigon government surrenders.”

Daniel was born in Etowah, Tenn., the son of a train dispatcher and a schoolteacher, and grew up in Knoxville, Tenn. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at 19 and became a rifle squad leader in the Korean War. Returning home with a Purple Heart and an ankle maimed by shrapnel, he attended the University of Tennessee, then jumped into journalism as a reporter at the Knoxville Journal. He joined UPI in Nashville in 1956, became its Knoxville manager in 1959 and went to Atlanta in 1960. For six years, he roamed the South, reporting on the civil rights movement, which he considered the most important story he ever covered.