Lou Cannon, Journalist and Ronald Reagan Biographer, Dies at 92

Lou Cannon, the journalist who interviewed Ronald Reagan over 50 times and penned five books about the former president, died Friday, Dec. 19, of complications from a stroke. He was 92.

Cannon’s death was confirmed by his son, Carl, to the Washington Post.

Cannon’s work spanned both terms of Reagan’s presidency, and the pair had a relationship that went back to at least the 1960s.

He began his career as a sports reporter for the Nevada State Journal, the National Review noted in 2022, while he was still in high school. He attended college at the University of Nevada and San Francisco State College, and then spent two years in the Army.

Cannon began working for newspapers in California and turned to political reporting in 1964 as a journalist for the San Jose Mercury. Cannon was first introduced to Reagan in 1965 when the actor launched his bid for governor of California and the pair continued to unite for interviews; Cannon regularly traveled with Reagan throughout the decades that followed.

Cannon’s first book on Reagan, “Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey,” was released in 1969. He also wrote “Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the L.A.P.D.” in 1998 and several more books about Reagan in the years that followed.

Cannon was born in New York City on June 3, 1933. He moved to Nevada with his family, where he graduated from high school in 1950 and college in 1952.

He married his wife Virginia in 1953 and the pair welcomed four children before divorcing. He married his wife Mary L. Shinkwin in 1985. In addition to his wife, Cannon is survived by three children from his first marriage—Carl, Judith, and Jackson Cannon—along with seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Virginia; and his son, David.

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