BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) – David Nyhan, an influential political reporter and columnist for The Boston Globe, died early Sunday at his home in Brookline of an apparent a heart attack. He was 64.

Nyhan was stricken Sunday after shoveling snow and was rushed by his wife to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was pronounced dead, the Globe reported for its Monday editions.

Nyhan retired from the Globe in 2001 after 32 years, but he continued to write a twice-weekly column for The Eagle-Tribune. He was scheduled to leave this week for a monthlong trip to Sri Lanka to accompany and write about a group of about 50 nurses and doctors taking part in tsunami relief efforts.

He straddled the worlds of journalism and politics after retiring from the Globe, helping Boston Mayor Thomas Menino with speechwriting and with the proposal that brought the Democratic National Convention to Boston.

Menino remembered Nyhan as “big in stature, but gentle in voice. When he spoke, he spoke the voice of reason.”

Before joining the Globe as Statehouse bureau chief in 1969, Nyhan served in the Air Force, then worked as a reporter for The Salem Evening News and in the Springfield and Boston bureaus of The Associated Press.

At the Globe, he covered the 1972 presidential campaign, served briefly as labor editor, and joined the paper’s Washington bureau in 1974, become its news editor a year later. He later served as White House correspondent, assistant managing editor for local news, and national correspondent. He began writing his op-ed column in 1985 and was named an associate editor in 1987.

He was the author of a 1988 biography of Michael Dukakis, “The Duke.” He was a Reuters Foundation Fellow at Oxford University in 1995 and a fellow in 2001 at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

Born in Boston and raised in Brookline, Nyhan graduated from Brookline High School in 1958. He majored in English at Harvard and played varsity lacrosse and football, recovering a fumble for a touchdown in the 1961 Harvard-Yale game.

Besides his wife and brother, Nyhan leaves two daughters.

, Veronica Jones of Washington, D.C., and Kate of Brookline; a son, Nicholas of New York City; a sister, Margaret R. Lockwood of Brookline; another brother, F. John of Chappaqua, N.Y., and two grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements by Bell-O’Dea Funeral Home in Brookline were incomplete as of Sunday night.

AP-ES-01-23-05 2215EST