Douglas Kiker, NBC News Correspondent

CHATHAM, Mass. - Douglas Kiker, an NBC News correspondent and veteran political reporter, died at his summer home yesterday, apparently of a heart attack. He was 61 years old.

Mr. Kiker, who most recently was a contributor to "NBC Nightly News," had been with the network since 1966. He apparently died in his sleep, said NBC News spokeswoman Katherine McQuay.

Michael Gartner, president of NBC News, said Mr. Kiker "embodied everything, I think, that we try to stand for."

President Bush wrote to NBC News correspondent John Cochran, "I respected Doug - so did all who saw him as the fair, objective and decent man he was. I'm sorry you've lost a good friend."

Before he joined NBC, Mr. Kiker was the White House correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune; he was in the presidential motorcade when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. He worked for the paper from 1963 to 1966.

With NBC, Mr. Kiker covered the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War and conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

Mr. Kiker also covered national political conventions in 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984, and followed the Watergate scandal and the subsequent resignation of President Nixon in 1974.

Mr. Kiker, a native of Griffin, Ga., graduated from Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. He served in the Navy during the Korean War.

He was the author of several novels, including "Stranger on the Shore" and "The Southerner."

Mr. Kiker is survived by his wife, Diana Simpson Kiker, four sons and a daughter. Funeral services were scheduled for Saturday in Chatham.