Frank Cormier; Associated Press Presidential Correspondent

Frank Cormier, 66, who covered five presidents as White House correspondent for Associated Press. Cormier, who retired in 1980 because of a disabling nerve disorder, started covering the White House for the international news service in 1962. He reported the activities of Presidents John F. Kennedy (including Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963), Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., Cormier also wrote four books, including a personalized account of the Johnson Administration. A native of Worcester, Mass., Cormier graduated from the Northwestern University School of Journalism and went to work for AP in Chicago in 1951. He transferred to Washington three years later. On Wednesday in Fairfax, Va., of a nerve disorder.