Nicholas Chriss; Former Los Angeles Times Reporter
Nicholas Chriss, who was a Los Angeles Times national staff reporter based in Houston from 1968 to 1980, died Saturday of a heart attack in a Houston hospital. He was 62.
Chriss, who had been covering the U.S. and Soviet space programs for the Houston Chronicle for the last 10 years, began his career with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo, Miss., after graduating from the University of Missouri.
He worked for United Press International for 12 years, based in London, Frankfurt and Atlanta. Key assignments were the installation of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the civil rights movement in the South, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Last fall, the Chronicle sent Chriss back to Europe to cover the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and pro-democracy movements in East Germany, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.
Chriss leaves his wife, Jutta Hausen, and two daughters, Catherine and Margaret Chriss, all of Houston, and a son, Nicholas S. Chriss of Boston.
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