PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Joseph Ungaro, a former managing editor of The Providence Evening Bulletin whose question to President Nixon at an editors meeting elicited his “I’m not a crook” reply, has died. He was 76.
Ungaro died Sunday at South County Hospital in South Kingstown of an undiagnosed illness, his family said.
At an annual convention of the Associated Press Managing Editors organization in 1973, Ungaro asked Nixon if he had accurately reported his income taxes.
Nixon’s famous declaration came after he had gone on to answer a subsequent question about the Watergate scandal. At the end of that reply, he doubled back to Ungaro’s question, saying:
“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
Nixon later agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. A reporter for the Providence newspaper, Jack White, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for reporting on Nixon’s tax troubles.
It was an exciting time for the newspaper, which knew it had an important story, said Carol Young, who had Ungaro as her first boss when she joined the newspaper.
and is now its deputy executive editor.
“Here was Joe asking (Nixon) about it,” Young said. “It was just a proud moment.”
Ungaro began working at Gannett Co.’s Westchester Rockland Newspapers in 1974 as managing editor. He later became vice president and executive editor, vice president and general manager and then president and publisher. He was given the additional responsibilities as vice president of the Metro Newspaper Division.
He later became president and chief executive of the Detroit Newspaper Agency, the company that managed a joint operating agreement between The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press.
For the last decade, Ungaro worked at Stars and Stripes, where he put together a consolidation plan for the newspaper and then became its ombudsman.
Ungaro, who resided in Charlestown, is survived by his wife, two daughters, a son and four grandchildren.
Ungaro graduated from Providence College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he also taught a class in media management, according to his family.
Visitation is being held Thursday in the Wakefield section of South Kingstown. The funeral is scheduled for Friday morning in Charlestown.
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