William Eaton, 74; Pulitzer Winner, Times Foreign Correspondent

William J. Eaton, a veteran Times correspondent and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for national reporting for stories that contributed to the Senate’s rejection of the nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. for the Supreme Court, died Tuesday in a hospice in Potomac, Md., after a long illness. He was 74.

Eaton started his almost 50-year career in journalism by covering local crime and City Hall news in his native Chicago. He rose to become Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Daily News, where he won his Pulitzer, and went on to serve two tours in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, as well as stints as Times bureau chief in New Delhi and Moscow.

The latter assignment, from 1984 to 1988, gave him a front-row seat when Mikhail S. Gorbachev began the reform process known as perestroika that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Bill was an excellent correspondent who was comfortable writing both heavy politics and complicated economics in ways crucial to our coverage of the evolving Soviet Union,” former Times Foreign Editor Alvin Shuster said Wednesday.

Characteristically, while reporting one of the most important foreign policy stories of the 20th century, Eaton maintained close contact with Soviet dissidents and ordinary Russians.

Instead of remaining isolated in Moscow’s small American community or confining himself to the actions of the Soviet government, Eaton used his hastily acquired Russian-language skills and his ebullient personality to seek out popular feelings about what Gorbachev was doing.

He roamed Moscow neighborhoods, stood in line with Russians waiting for vodka allotments, and supported artists who were challenging government controls. Sometimes he even sheltered dissidents in his own quarters.

Eaton’s work in Moscow reflected his buoyant approach to reporting wherever his assignments took him.

Colleagues recalled him as a man of unfailing good humor who always came through, even under the most difficult deadline conditions.

Jack Nelson, who was Washington bureau chief when Eaton joined The Times, said he never saw Eaton read the paper in the office. “He was always too busy writing stories or working sources on the phone,” Nelson said.

In Washington, Eaton covered Congress, politics, economic policy and other national issues. In addition to the Pulitzer, he won the Sidney Hillman award for his work on the Haynsworth nomination.

His work on the Haynsworth stories also earned him the enmity of President Nixon, who had nominated the federal judge to fill the seat vacated by Abe Fortas, who quit under threat of impeachment. As the Watergate political scandal unfolded, Eaton’s name was found to be on Nixon’s enemies list.

The son of a plasterer, Eaton started his career in journalism with the Evanston (Ill.) Review in the Chicago suburbs, moved to City News Bureau, then worked for United Press International and the Knight-Ridder papers in addition to the Daily News and the Los Angeles Times.

He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1951 and a master’s degree the following year. He was a Neiman fellow at Harvard for the 1962-63 academic year.

Eaton had been president of the National Press Club in Washington; chairman of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which represents reporters covering Congress; and a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for a Free Press..

Along with the late Frank Cormier, a Northwestern classmate and longtime Washington correspondent for Associated Press, Eaton wrote a biography of labor leader Walter Reuther.

Eaton served in the Army from 1952 to 1955, rising to the rank of sergeant.

He is survived by his wife, Carole Kennon; a daughter, Sally Misare of Castle Rock, Colo.; and two grandchildren.