NYT : Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary, Dies at 53

Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary, Dies at 53

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG | July 13, 2008

WASHINGTON — Tony Snow, the conservative columnist and television commentator who relished sparring with reporters during a 17-month stint as President Bush’s press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer, the White House said. He was 53.

Mr. Snow’s tenure was interrupted by a recurrence of his cancer, and he was quite public about his battle with the disease, saying he wanted to offer hope to other cancer patients. His message to them, he once said, was: “Don’t think about dying. Think about living.”

Dana Perino, who succeeded Mr. Snow as press secretary, said Mr. Snow’s family informed her of the death early Saturday morning. Mr. Bush received the news from his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten.

“It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “He brought wit, grace and a great love of country to his work. His colleagues will cherish memories of his energetic personality and relentless good humor.”

With his tall, lanky frame, his thick head of gray hair (it thinned, but never disappeared, during chemotherapy) and his showman’s style, Mr. Snow, who joined the White House in April 2006, helped reinvigorate a press operation that many Republicans believed had been lacking. He loved serving at the White House, once calling it “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

Before becoming the chief spokesman for the president, Mr. Snow was a television commentator for Fox News. He was also host of the network’s Sunday public affairs program “Fox News Sunday.” Before joining Fox, Mr. Snow was a syndicated columnist for the Detroit News and USA Today.

At the White House, he turned the daily press briefing into something of a one-man show, challenging reporters’ questions and delivering hard-hitting answers, even when he was occasionally short on the facts. More than once, Mr. Snow was forced to apologize, as he did shortly after taking the job when he erroneously said Mr. Bush viewed embryonic stem cell research as murder.

“He’s velvet glove and iron fist,” Jim Axelrod, the CBS White House correspondent, once said in describing Mr. Snow.

Coming into the job, Mr. Snow had credibility with the media because as a commentator, he had often been critical of Mr. Bush. But the transition from pundit to mouthpiece proved a tad complicated for him, as he struggled to rein himself in.

“Tony Snow broke the mold — he was a completely different kind of press secretary,” said Ann Compton of ABC News, who has covered six presidents. “For one thing, he would give you his own opinion and you’d have to say, ‘Tony, wait, I asked what the president thought.’ “

His snappy sound bites made Mr. Snow an instant hit among Republicans — and he was not shy about breaking barriers. “It’s like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,” Karl Rove, the president’s former political strategist, once said in describing him.

During the 2006 midterm election campaign, Mr. Snow raised eyebrows by using his celebrity to raise money for Republican candidates — something that by Mr. Snow’s own admission, other press secretaries had declined to do for fear of seeming too partisan.

Mr. Snow said simply that his job was to serve the president, and that is what he intended to do.

Ms. Compton, who had been in touch with Mr. Snow in recent months, said his condition took a turn for the worse after the White House correspondents’ dinner in April. “He had a front-row seat and he looked wonderful,” at the event, she said.

But he later e-mailed her to say that he had been suffering intestinal problems — “a bump in the road,” she said he called it — and was having a harder time than expected recovering. On June 13, while traveling in Paris with Mr. Bush, Ms. Compton received another unexpected electronic missive from Mr. Snow, who by then was quite sick, she said.

He had heard that Helen Thomas, the 87-year-old veteran White House correspondent with whom he had had some of his most pointed exchanges, was ill. “If in touch, would you please pass on my love,” Mr. Snow wrote.

Ms. Perino said Mr. Snow was the inspiration for her 2008 New Year’s resolution, which was always to take her husband’s telephone calls, no matter how busy she was at work. “We learned a lot from him — most importantly how we should love our families and treat one another,” she said. “The White House has lost a great friend.”

Robert Anthony Snow was born in Berea, Ky., on June 1, 1955, and grew up in Cincinnati. After graduating from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1977, he spent his early career in print journalism, writing editorials for such newspapers as The Greensboro Record in Greensboro, N.C., and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. He eventually became the editorial page editor of The Washington Times.

In 1991, he left newspapers to work as a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. During the Clinton administration, he went back into journalism, and he served as the first host of the television news program “Fox News Sunday” from 1996 to 2003. He was the host of a Fox News radio show when he was brought in by the current administration to replace Scott McClellan as press secretary.

Mr. Snow often said that he felt stalked all his adult life by the threat of colon cancer; his mother died of the disease when he was 17. By the time he joined the White House, he had already been treated for it; in 2005 he received a diagnosis of Stage 3 colon cancer, meaning the disease had spread to the lymph nodes but not to other organs. At that time, he underwent surgery to have his colon removed.

When he joined the White House, he said he believed he had beaten his cancer, but that he always knew a recurrence was possible. At his first White House briefing, he wore a yellow bracelet from the Lance Armstrong Foundation “because I had cancer last year,” he said, choking back tears.

The cancer recurred in March 2007, less than a year after Mr. Snow had taken the White House job. He underwent surgery again, took five weeks off, and returned. But he announced in September 2007 that he was resigning his $168,000 a year job — not because of the cancer, he said, but because he wanted to make more money to support his family.

He is survived by his wife, Jill, and their three children, Kendall, Robbie and Kristi.