Former ‘Meet the Press’ moderator Garrick Utley dies

Garrick Utley, the longtime TV newsman who worked for NBC News, ABC News and CNN in his 50-year career, has died at age 74.

Utley died after a long battle with cancer, according to the Associated Press, which first reported his death on Friday.

He worked for NBC News for three decades, beginning as a researcher for “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” and then correspondent reporting on the Vietnam War. Later, he anchored the Sunday edition of the “NBC Nightly News,” the Saturday edition of “Today” and moderated “Meet the Press” from 1989 to 1991. He also hosted a variety of prime-time newsmagazine shows on the network before moving to ABC News to be their chief foreign correspondent in 1993.

“I was lucky,” Utley said in a 2012 interview for the State University of New York. “You have to have talent, you have to have opportunities. But you also have to have timing. I went [to Vietnam] as a reporter, Vietnam became the biggest story of our day.”

In 1997 he joined CNN, where he reported and helped anchor the network’s coverage of 9/11. He left the network in 2002 and in his final years was a senior fellow and professor of broadcasting and journalism at the State University of New York, Oswego. He taught classes via remote video conference from the SUNY Levin Institute located in midtown Manhattan.

Utley was also a fan of opera and hosted “Live at the Met” on PBS.

Remembering the 6-foot-6 newsman on “Today,” Matt Lauer said: “He was an imposing figure physically; he was a big, big guy. But also intellectually. He was a smart man.”

Utley is survived by his wife, Gertje, an art historian.

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