Ward Sims, Longtime AP Reporter

Ward Sims, a veteran Associated Press reporter and editor whose career included Alaskan stints as correspondent in Juneau and Fairbanks and bureau chief in Anchorage died yesterday in Seattle. He was 65.

Mr. Sims, who retired in 1984 after more than three decades with the wire service, had been flown to Seattle's Providence Medical Center on Aug. 15 after suffering a heart attack at his home in Sitka, Alaska.

He spent his entire professional career with The Associated Press, joining the wire service in San Francisco in 1950 after his graduation from Montana State University.

One of Mr. Sims' biggest stories was the 1964 earthquake that devastated Anchorage, Valdez and other parts of south central Alaska. As Alaska correspondent in Juneau, Mr. Sims was the AP's first reporter on the scene and spent weeks with an AP team covering the disaster.

Mr. Sims became a correspondent in Tacoma in 1951 and later that year transferred to Seattle. In 1960, he was named Alaska statehouse correspondent in Juneau, where his wife assisted him.

In 1968, he transferred to the AP's Philadelphia bureau and a year later became a general desk editor in New York.

He returned to Alaska to open a Fairbanks bureau in 1977 and a year later became chief of bureau in Anchorage.

Mr. Sims was born in Tacoma and served in the Army in Europe during World War II.

Survivors include his wife, Virginia, and a son, Dixon, in

Fairbanks.