Remembering Hugh Sidey

Hugh Sidey loved ceremony but hated pretension. He had excellent perspective, but also had an eye for the telling detail: Lyndon Johnson's hydra-headed shower, George H.W. Bush's penchant for e-mailing racy jokes to friends, Richard Nixon's love of classical music. He came to Washington in 1957 to cover the second Administration of Dwight Eisenhower for LIFE, switched to TIME to cover J.F.K. and reported on every President since then. He went to Dallas with J.F.K., to China with Nixon, to Moscow's Red Square with Ronald Reagan. Yet he returned as often as he could to his hometown of Greenfield, Iowa, where his entry-level job in journalism was sweeping the floor at his family's beloved newspaper, the Adair County Free Press (still running strong, by the way, with brother Edwin as publisher).

Hugh died last week while visiting Paris with his wife Anne and daughter Sandy. We offer them and his three other children--Cynthia, Bettina and Edwin--and his seven grandchildren our deepest condolences. Hugh did many things well in journalism, always with modesty and grace, but his most lasting legacy was his ability to see Presidents as people first, vulnerable and human.