FALMOUTH – Robert “Bob” Peder Dyk, 71, died Saturday, March 22, 2008 at his home in Falmouth.

Bob began his career in broadcasting in Los Angeles as a CBS News editorial assistant during the 1960 Democratic National Convention – the one that nominated John F. Kennedy. During the decade, he also covered riots, murders, earthquakes, forest fires, mud slides, love- and hate-ins as a reporter-writer-producer for KMPC, KTLA and KABC-TV. While vacationing in London during the winter of 1964-65, Bob was assigned to do several reports of the death of Sir Winston Churchill.

In 1973, he moved from Los Angeles to London where he freelanced for CBS Radio News, covering the IRA bombings, the rise and downfall of various prime ministers, one royal wedding and at least one royal divorce. ABC News recruited Bob in 1978, where his assignments included bloodletting in Beirut and the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy and American hostages in Tehran.

Bob returned to the U.S. in 1984, and after a brief stint with KGO-TV and KRBK-TV in his home state of California, accepted an offer to live and work in Maine between 1987 and 2004 as an anchor and later reporter with Channel Eight and News Radio WMTW. He came out of retirement last year as a part-time anchor-reporter for WGAN.

Surviving are his wife of 21 years, Patricia Dyk; his daughter, Gaby; his son, Tom; his sister, Mary Greenacre and her husband, Francis; and his brother, Jim and his wife, Sandy.

He was predeceased by his first wife, Susan Francesca Dyk, nee Scott, in 1983.