Larry McQuillan, former White House correspondent, dies at 70

Larry McQuillan, a long-time White House correspondent who since 2004 was public affairs director for the American Institutes for Research (AIR), died Sept. 19 after a three-year battle with cancer. He was 70 and had been a National Press Club member for nearly 11 years.

A native of Stratford, Conn., Larry lived in Silver Spring, Md., and was a graduate of St. Bonaventure School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

He covered the White House from Presidents Gerald Ford to George W. Bush for UPI, Reuters and USA Today and was a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association.

Former presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater described McQuillan in his memoir as a journalist who "knew how to read a police blotter, how to get a hospital nurse to discuss her patients and how to tune in to a police scanner to be first at a fire. He was real people."

He was drafted into the Army and served as a journalist in Vietnam. One of his early assignments as a civilian reporter was covering the 1971 Attica, N.Y., prison riot, when he was an Albany-based UPI reporter.

In 1990, St. Bonaventure honored him with its Hellinger Award for distinguished journalism graduates. In addition to his work at AIR, a D.C.-based behavioral and social science research organization, McQuillan chaired the communications committee of the American Educational Research Association.

After transitioning from journalism to public affairs, McQuillan was sometimes consulted by job-hunting former colleagues, as traditional news outlets cut staff. He told U.S. News & World Report in 2007 that leaving a high-profile media job for PR meant "you won't be as interesting at cocktail parties."

He is survived by his wife, Geraldine, son, Sean, and two granddaughters.