DUBLIN, Ireland -- Donal O'Higgins, for 37 years a correspondent and editor for United Press International, died at his home in Dublin Monday, his family announced. He was 61.
O'Higgins, who was born in Curragh, County Kildare Sept. 9, 1922, retired last year as UPI's Dublin bureau manager. He is survived by his widow, the former Teresa Sharpe of Roscrea, County Tipperary, and four sons, Terry, Donal, Raymond and Gregory.
In 1942, O'Higgins resigned from the Irish army -- in which he had risen from private to captain in three years -- to become a journalist. He joined the British news agency Reuters, for which he worked in Burma, India and Egypt.
He resigned in 1946 to complete a law course at University College, Dublin and joined UPI that same year when it opened a bureau in Dublin.
O'Higgins was transferred to UPI's foreign cables desk in New York in 1953, then was reappointed Dublin bureau manager in 1959.
For many years, he covered the rise of sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
He was the only foreign correspondent on the 4-day student civil rights march in January l969 from Belfast to Londonderry, which ended in an ambush by Protestant extremists.
He also covered the Bogside battles in Londonderry in August, 1969 during which he was beaten by a mob and was hit by tear gas fired by British troops.
O'Higgins covered Pope John Paul II's first homecoming visit to Poland in 1979, and the pontiff's subsequent visits to Ireland and the United States.
In l979 also, he was twice in Tehran covering the Iranian revolution.
O'Higgins was the son of a former Irish Defense Minister and nephew of Kevin O'Higgins, the first Vice President of the Irish Free State. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and University College in Dublin.
