Ray Scherer

Ray Scherer

Former Chief White House Correspondent

Ray Scherer, former Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News whose broadcast career spanned four decades and who reported on six administrations from Harry Truman to Gerald Ford, died Saturday, July 1 at his home in Washington.

He was 80, and died of cancer.

Known for his lanky Gary Cooper-like persona, Scherer exuded a unique, almost patrician style among the otherwise hard-charging gaggle of fledgling news hounds. A frequent contributor to The Today Show, Scherer’s midwestern demeanor, towering height, thick dark hair and voice rich with gravitas prompted host Dave Garroway to routinely refer to his esteemed colleague as “Lincolnesque.”

Exceedingly modest, with an engaging self-effacing humor which charmed heads of state, White House staffers and social Washington, Scherer was regarded as one of the last great “gentlemen” of the press. Whether it was exchanging witticisms with Harry Truman, covering Richard Nixon’s 1959 “Kitchen Debate” in Russia, trading celebrity gossip with a rapt John F. Kennedy on Air Force One or bumping over Texas tumbleweeds in a convertible with LBJ behind the wheel, Scherer was one of the founding members of “the boys on the bus.”

Among the pioneer television reporters to land the White House beat in 1951, Scherer was regarded as a phenomenon by his peers for his uncanny ability to go “live” after a press conference and repeat verbatim entire segments of presidential verbiage. He sparred with oldtime print reporters who objected to cameras in Dwight Eisenhower’s filmed presidential press conferences. “Before we were in the back row. Now all of sudden we sat in the front row and took up space,” he later recalled. “The print reporters groused a lot. They said we’d make actors of them.”