Golden Owl Bruce Agnew dies at age 89

Bruce Andras Agnew, a member of the National Press Club for more than 60 years, died at age 89 on New Year’s Day.

“My dad worked until 2023, pretty much up to his passing,” said his daughter, Eleanor Agnew Kotler.

Agnew began his 60-year journalist career as a reporter in New York in 1958; then he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1962, where he covered Capitol Hill and the White House. He was a member of the White House Press Corps from 1962 through 1985 for several publications, including United Press International, the New York Post, and McGraw Hill’s World News and BusinessWeek. Highlights of his reporting included his interviews with Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. He covered the White House when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. His biggest newsbreak was during Watergate when three Republican senators told President Nixon in the Oval Office that he had lost the support of his party, leading to his resignation in 1974. He also witnessed and reported on Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination at the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

Agnew became bureau chief at McGraw-Hill World News until 1988, editing, reporting and mentoring a team of 10–25 reporters, one of whom recalled him saying wise mantras to encourage her and other reporters, such as “there is no such thing as a writing problem, just a reporting problem.”

The second half of Agnew’s career was as a science journalist working for the The Journal of NIH Research from 1989 through 1998, covering scientific advances in virology, genetics, clinical medicine, and policy issues. He then became a freelance writer/editor in the scientific community until 2022, writing articles for Scientific American, Science, and The Scientist, among others. He wrote the Genomics chapter for the first and second NIH Biannual Reports to Congress.

Agnew was born on Nov. 9, 1934, in New York City and raised in Weston, Connecticut.

Agnew graduated Summa Cum Laude from Choate, a boarding school in Greenwich (now Choate Rosemary Hall, a college preparatory school in Wallingford, Connecticut). He accepted a one-year English fellowship at Westminster Hall in London, where he attended Queen Elizabeth’s II coronation from the choir rafters in the Abbey. He was among only a handful of Americans in attendance. After his fellowship, he became a House Scholar at Yale University, where he received his undergraduate degree in English Literature in 1958.

Agnew was predeceased by his wife Joan Constantikes and stepdaughter, Patricia Colella. He is survived by his daughter, Eleanor A. Kotler (Dale); nephews Timothy Downey; and Christopher Downey (Hema), his grandnephew and grandniece, Avi and Aanya; his stepdaughters Andrea Torres (Miguel), her twins, Alexa and Miggy Torres; Christina Lawrence (Piers); and Amy Claire Constantikes, her sons James George and Forrest William Tatum; and Katie Colella, daughter of Pat Colella (Frank).

Two memorial services are being planned to celebrate Agnew’s life: Sunday March 10, at 2 p.m. at the Bethesda United Methodist Church 8300 Old Georgetown Road Bethesda, Maryland. Later in the year, a second service is being arranged in Westport, Connecticut, along with burial at Willowbrook Cemetery.

More information is available in his official obituary.