Turner in 1957

Wallace Turner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who mentored countless young reporters who worked in San Francisco as The New York Times bureau chief and was with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1968, died Saturday at a hospital in Springfield, Ore., at age 89. The Chronicle obit notes:

He covered nearly every major story of his era, including the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the 1976 bank robbery trial of Patricia Hearst, and the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy, a presidential candidate with whom Mr. Turner had become a close friend. Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after winning the California Democratic primary. 

“Wally was doing his job and following Bobby into the kitchen the night he was shot,” recalled William Carlsen, who worked for Mr. Turner at the Times for five years before joining The Chronicle.

Link to NYT obit. (Photo credit: NYT)