R.I.P.: NYC Radio Host, Reporter Dick Oliver Dead at 77

Dick Oliver 1993

Dick Oliver, an award-winning reporter and editor for The Daily News who became familiar to New York television audiences as a longtime correspondent for the local morning show “Good Day New York,” died on Friday in Manhattan.

He was 77, according to the NYTimes.

His death, at a hospice care facility, was caused by complications of a stroke he had in September, his wife, Kathryn McGrath Oliver, said.

Mr. Oliver appeared on local television as an interviewer and political commentator in the 1980s. In 1988 he became a roving reporter for “Good Day New York,” a popular morning show broadcast on WNYW, Channel 5, New York City’s Fox affiliate.

He was shooting a live segment for the show near City Hall when a plane struck the World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001.

His broadcast had some of the earliest video of the attacks, and he stayed on the scene to interview witnesses. His wife said his life may have been saved when a police officer prevented him from approaching the towers. Minutes later a plane struck the South Tower.

Mr. Oliver started at The Daily News as a copy boy in 1961 and spent most of the 1960s as a reporter for United Press International. He returned to The News as a reporter in 1969.

Beginning in 1978 he hosted “The Daily News Bulldog Edition,” an evening radio program that was broadcast on several consecutive New York stations, including WOR 710 AM, until 1995. He became an assistant managing editor in 1980.

He earned a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1962 and worked for U.P.I. in New York, Washington, Tennessee and Saigon before returning to The News.