Current:Home > reviewsAP’s Lawrence Knutson, who covered Washington’s transcendent events for nearly 4 decades, has died -WealthSphere Pro
AP’s Lawrence Knutson, who covered Washington’s transcendent events for nearly 4 decades, has died
View
Date:2025-04-18 04:53:26
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawrence L. Knutson, a longtime Associated Press writer whose deep knowledge of the presidency, Congress and American history made him an institution in his own right, has died. He was 87.
Knutson, who had prostate cancer and other health problems, died Saturday night in hospice care at a memory care facility in Washington, said his cousin, Katherine Knutson Garrett, who had recently been managing his affairs.
Knutson’s AP career spanned 37 years and the terms of eight presidents before his retirement in 2003.
In that time, he established himself as an expert on Washington — “a city of inspiration and spite, of spring bloom and eternal ambition, a low-rise marble capital that tourists honor and critics malign,” he wrote. He seemed to carry the soul of the place with him, as soulless as that place could seem to be to some.
Born in Chicago, Lawrence Lauder Knutson was raised in Milwaukee and rural Wisconsin before he interrupted his university studies to enlist in the Army. He was sent to a U.S. base outside Bordeaux, France, where he produced the base newspaper and wondered “what journalism would be like if you did it for real.”
He worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago after the Army and university, then the Chicago Tribune before the AP hired him in 1965. The next year, he was mere feet away, covering an open-housing march led by Martin Luther King Jr., when a rock hurled from hostile bystanders struck King on the head, knocking him to one knee.
“He recovered, and surrounded by aides, led about 700 people through hostile crowds numbering in the thousands,” Knutson recalled. Knutson transferred to Washington in 1967.
Colleagues remember Knutson as an elegant writer on the transcendent events of his time. He was always quick to give acquaintances tours of Congress more intimate than the official tour guides put on. He also had his eccentricities.
“Sitting beside Larry in the Senate Press Gallery for many years, I always admired his quick grasp of a story, his writing and his love of Congress as an institution,” said former AP writer Jim Luther. “And who doesn’t take notes on a checkbook or use a paper clip to hold his glasses together?”
The story is legion of Knutson sleeping in late when in New York to cover a 1986 whistle-stop train tour by Jimmy Carter and presidential running mate Walter Mondale to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Missing the train, Knutson took a succession of cabs from city to city, racking up a substantial bill only to find the train gone when he got to each stop.
In a line of work that is relentlessly focused on the moment, Knutson was also one to look back, reaching for lessons of history that informed the present.
“Larry was indeed deeply knowledgeable about Congress and Washington politics,” said Sandy Johnson, a former AP Washington bureau chief. “But what I remember most vividly is his interest in history, which translated into a column we called Washington Yesterday. His insightful and delightful writing about Washington history was an antidote to the gravity and infighting of the usual capital news -- and his columns always made me smile.”
There was his story about presidential portraits: “George Washington came to the presidency under siege by artists who saw his character and their fortunes in the contours of his face. The American Revolution’s commander in chief found persistent artists more irritating than the crack of British muskets; the lengthy sittings portrait painters required were, he said, mind-numbing wastes of fleeting time.”
And this, in the age of Bill (“Slick Willie”) Clinton: “A nickname, says the proverb, is ‘the heaviest stone the devil can throw at a man.’ Some wound and leave scars. Some stick like burrs. Others fall away and are forgotten.
“American presidents have attracted and endured nicknames ever since George Washington was called the ‘Sword of the Revolution,’ Father of His Country,’ the ‘Sage of Mount Vernon’ and, interestingly, ‘The Old Fox.’”
After his retirement, Knutson wrote a book about presidential vacations and retreats, “Away from the White House,” published by the White House Historical Association.
Knutson will be buried in a small cemetery in City Point, Wisconsin, where many family members are interred, his cousin said. No details were immediately released on a memorial service or his survivors.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
veryGood! (3986)
Related
- EU countries double down on a halt to Syrian asylum claims but will not yet send people back
- Fired Jaguars Jumbotron operator sentenced to 220 years for child sex abuse
- Finally: Pitcher Jordan Montgomery signs one-year, $25 million deal with Diamondbacks
- Cases settled: 2 ex-officials of veterans home where 76 died in the pandemic avoid jail time
- See you latte: Starbucks plans to cut 30% of its menu
- Famed American sculptor Richard Serra, the ‘poet of iron,’ has died at 85
- Are banks, post offices, UPS and FedEx open on Good Friday 2024? Here's what to know
- Unlock Your Inner Confidence With Heidi D'Amelio’s Guide to Balance and Self-Care
- Travis Hunter, the 2
- Pickup truck driver charged for role in crash that left tractor-trailer dangling from bridge
Ranking
- The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test
- Costco is cracking down on its food court. You now need to show your membership card to eat there.
- Are you eligible to claim the Saver's Credit on your 2023 tax return?
- 2 pilots taken to hospital after Army helicopter crashes during training in Washington state
- 'Vanderpump Rules' star DJ James Kennedy arrested on domestic violence charges
- NFL approves significant changes to kickoffs, hoping for more returns and better safety
- Aerial images, video show aftermath of Baltimore bridge collapse
- Biden administration approves the nation’s seventh large offshore wind project
Recommendation
'Vanderpump Rules' star DJ James Kennedy arrested on domestic violence charges
Indictment accuses Rwandan man of lying about role in his country’s 1994 genocide to come to US
Who owns the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore?
Maps and video show site of Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore
Gen. Mark Milley's security detail and security clearance revoked, Pentagon says
A woman accuses a schoolmate of raping her at age 12. The school system says she is making it up.
Trial date set in August for ex-elected official accused of killing Las Vegas journalist
Costco is cracking down on its food court. You now need to show your membership card to eat there.