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Hal McClure, who covered two Arab-Israeli wars after turning a passion for travel and the written word into a career as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press, has died in California. He was 92.

McClure died Sunday at a Laguna Hills hospital following surgery to relieve a blood clot on his brain from a recent fall, according to his sister, Virginia McClure.

McClure spent 21 years overseas for the AP beginning in the mid-1950s.

He said he knew he wanted to be a reporter after joining a journalism club at San Fernando High School in Los Angeles. But his career was put on hold by a stint in the Air Force, where he served as a pilot and flight instructor.

"When he got out of the service, his goal was to get a newspaper job and get married," said Stan Walsh, a longtime friend.

McClure did both, in short order. He landed a job as a general assignment reporter at a small newspaper in Central California and wed his sweetheart, Dorothy. It was a marriage that lasted nearly five decades, until her death several years ago.

After a few itinerant years at various papers across California, the AP in Los Angeles offered McClure a job covering Hollywood. He accepted, with the hope of eventually getting a foreign posting.

During his stint on the entertainment beat, he was one of the first reporters on the scene of a car crash that took an eye from Sammy Davis Jr.

His first foreign assignment took him to Singapore, and afterward he was appointed correspondent in Malaysia. One of the big stories he covered at the time was the 1961 disappearance _ still unresolved _ of Michael Rockefeller, son of New York governor and presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller.

McClure covered the search in New Guinea, where the 23-year-old was studying tribal cultures.

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Ex-AP foreign correspondent Hal McClure dies