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JAMES C. LAGIER, a former Associated Press bureau chief in the U.S. and Japan, and FCCJ president, died on Nov. 21 in Walnut Creek, California, after battling cancer, according to his niece, Sydney Lagier. He was 80.
A native of Manteca, California, Lagier joined the AP in Honolulu in 1962 and retired in 2001 as chief of the Tokyo bureau. The two locations were fitting bookends to a career that also took Lagier to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Columbus, Ohio, and Fresno, California, as a reporter, newsroom manager and executive. “I never met anyone who didn’t like Jim Lagier,” said Louis D. Boccardi, AP’s president and chief executive officer from 1985 to 2003.
Early in his career, Lagier covered America’s atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific and flew on a B-52 bombing mission over Vietnam from Guam. While serving as news desk editor in Los Angeles in 1968, he worked on coverage of the assassination of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and filed the AP bulletin on Kennedy’s death. As bureau chief in San Francisco from 1972 to 1974, he oversaw coverage of the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. And in Japan, he supervised reporting about the 1995 Kobe earthquake that killed more than 6,000 people.
Lagier once said during an interview that he felt like he was on a “yo-yo” at one point in his AP career. “I felt like I was a vagabond, and I was so astounded that I was being chosen for these fabulous jobs,” he said. “I mean, a lower middle class person, born into poverty, suddenly having these electrifying jobs in the world’s oldest, largest and most lovable news gathering organization.”
Lagier said a highlight of his news career was his tenure in the San Francisco bureau, where he was responsible for coverage of Northern California during Vietnam War protests. Lagier previously worked in AP’s Fresno bureau, where he wrote about Cesar Chavez’s efforts to organize farm workers.
In 1975, Lagier became bureau chief for Ohio. His news editor there, Henry Heilbrunn, recalled that Lagier frequently walked his newsrooms at all hours, stopping at In 1975, Lagier became bureau chief for Ohio. His news editor there, Henry Heilbrunn, recalled that Lagier frequently walked his newsrooms at all hours, stopping at desks to urge his staff to “be happy in your work.”
The following year, Lagier was appointed general executive for New England, based in Boston. Starting in 1979, he served as deputy director for newspaper membership at AP headquarters in New York City.
Lagier was transferred to Tokyo in 1993, returning to a country he had visited while serving in the U.S. Army in Seoul, Korea.
Lagier graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962 and left the AP for a year in 1966 to complete graduate school and teach journalism there. He was a benefactor to the University of California, establishing a charitable trust in journalism and leaving a gift to the music department.
Before joining AP, he worked as the sports editor and a general assignment reporter at the Hanford Sentinel in California.
Lagier was also an accomplished pianist and studied with jazz piano teachers in the New York City area.
AP
