ROGERS, Warren (Joseph, Jr.) 1922-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 6, 1922, in New Orleans, LA; died of complications from a perforated ulcer August 31, 2003, in Washington, DC. Journalist and author. Rogers was a Washington insider whose friendship with Robert F. Kennedy led to several books about the Kennedy clan. He attended Tulane University, but left in 1941 to join the Marines; he fought in the Pacific theater during World War II and saw action at Guadalcanal. Returning home, he worked his way up from copy boy to cub reporter at the New Orleans Item. He next joined the Associated Press in 1947, where he worked as a reporter in Baton Rouge before being assigned to Washington, D.C. in 1951, and he became a diplomatic correspondent there from 1953 to 1959. He was hired by the New York Herald Tribune in 1959. Rogers covered military affairs and international news for the next four years, and it was while working for the Herald Tribune that he met and became friends with Bobby Kennedy. He then returned to Washington, D.C. as chief correspondent for Hearst Newspapers and then as editor for Look magazine. The 1960s were eventful years, and Rogers covered such high-profile news as the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. His friendship with Kennedy gave him inside access into the 1968 campaign, and when Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles, Rogers was there and rode with him in the ambulance. He left Look in 1970 to work briefly for the Los Angeles Times and then the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, all the while covering events in the nation's capital. During the mid-1970s Rogers left journalism for a time to be vice president of public affairs for the National Forest Products Association, but he returned to journalism as editor-in-chief of Plus Publications from 1977 to 1979, and then worked as editor of the newsletter White House Weekly from 1981 to 1989. He also ran the Georgetown Courier from 1991 to 1992, but from 1979 on Rogers mostly worked as a freelancer. He was the author of several books about the Kennedys, including Ted Kennedy (1980), Hickory Hill: Bob Kennedy at Home (1985), and When I Think of Bobby: A Personal Memoir of the Kennedy Years (1993), as well as other works such as The Floating Revolution (1962) and Outpost of Freedom (1965), written with Roger Donlon.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2003, p. B10.

Washington Post, September 2, 2003, p. B4.