Obituary: Hugh Sidey

* Hugh Sidey, Time magazine correspondent. Chronicled US Presidents for more than 40 years.

Veteran Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey, who chronicled US Presidents for more than 40 years, died on Monday in Paris, aged 78.

The son of an Iowa newspaper editor, Sidey covered 10 Presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to the Bushes.

He began covering Eisenhower for Life magazine in 1957 and began writing Time's Presidency column in 1966.

Sidey followed John F. Kennedy to the Vienna Summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and was with the President when he was assassinated.

The reporter covered Richard Nixon's exit from Washington when the President resigned in 1974, and was one of the few journalists to whom Ronald Reagan talked regularly during his eight years in the White House.

Sidey was also at the White House when Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat together in 1993 to began peace talks between Israel and the PLO.

Born on September 3, 1927, Sidey attended Iowa State University and worked on his family's weekly newspaper in Greenfield, Iowa.

Sidey, who lived in a Maryland suburb of Washington, was elected head of the White House Historical Association in 1998.

He and his wife, Anne, have four children.

- REUTERS