VETERAN war correspondent, former United Press International journalist and long-time South China Morning Post columnist Bert Okuley died in hospital yesterday, aged 56.
Okuley, who wrote his last column, A Page From The Past, in last week's Asia Magazine, suffered a massive stroke on Friday afternoon.
He died at 4 pm yesterday in Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Born in Detroit in the US, Okuley joined UPI as a reporter in his late teens and travelled extensively in the country before being posted overseas.
He was posted to Vietnam during the war and was famed for spotting the last helicopter to fly out of Saigon during the fall of the city in 1975.
He alerted close friend and colleague Hubert Van Es to the photographer's famous picture of the terrified South Vietnamese civilians boarding the Air America helicopter as it landed on the roof of the Alliance Francais offices.