Legendary Vietnam War reporter George Esper just passed away at 79. He famously refused to be called back to the U.S. by the Associated Press so that he could stay and witness the Fall of Saigon. There’s sadly little of his work online. From the Washington Post:

“While he considered his coverage of the dramatic end of the 15-year Indochina conflict the high point in a 42-year career of deadline reporting, it was far from the only one. Esper was legendary for his dogged persistence in covering news in war and in peace.

‘You don’t want to be obnoxious and you don’t want to stalk people, but I think persistence pays off,’ Esper said in an interview in 2000.

So when he was assigned to write a story for the 20th anniversary of the 1970 shootings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and could find no phone number for the mother of one of the victims, Esper drove an hour through a snowstorm to knock on her door.

‘She just kind of waved me off, and she said, ‘We’re not giving any interviews.’ Just like that,’ Esper recalled. ‘I didn’t really push her. On the other hand, I didn’t turn around and leave. I just kind of stood there, wet with snow, dripping wet and cold, and I think she kind of took pity on me.’

Like so many others over the years, she opened up to Esper.”

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Fall of Saigon, 1975: