CBS News Correspondent Richard Wagner Dead at 85

CBS

Richard Wagner, a longtime correspondent for CBS News, has died. He was 85.

Wagner's wife Donna Lewis-Wagner confirmed the news of his death to PEOPLE, saying that her husband died at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. A cause of death was not provided.

Wagner was known for being a key contributor on CBS Evening News from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The news reporter was assigned to Saigon in 1964, where he covered the Vietnam War at a time when correspondents were not yet accustomed to providing firsthand accounts of wartime activity to a television audience back home.

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Other major international events covered by Wagner include the Salvadoran Civil War in 1984, where he reported alongside the late war photographer John Hoagland, the Ayatollah Khomeini return from exile to Iran in 1979, and the release of Nelson Mandela from a South African prison in 1990.

An accomplished radio news reporter as well, Wagner won the Overseas Press Club Ben Grauer Award in 1987 for reporting from abroad, after he covered events leading up to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait as well as Operation Desert Storm.

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Wagner also reported on landmark national news, including the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 and NASA's Challenger disaster in 1986.

Before leaving CBS News in 1993, he became the program's first health and science correspondent.

A native of Boston and U.S. Army veteran, Wagner is survived by his wife as well as a daughter, Kerry Wagner.