James N. Wallace, 76, foreign correspondent

James N. Wallace, 76, foreign correspondent

James N. Wallace, a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News & World Report, died April 5 of a heart attack in Vienna, Va. He was 76.

Mr. Wallace was born in Sioux City, Iowa. His father, who was a cabinetmaker and breeder of Appaloosa horses, moved the family to Beaverton, Ore., when Mr. Wallace was an infant.

Mr. Wallace entered the Coast Guard in 1945, the last year of World War II. He was trained as a radioman and discharged at the end of the war.

He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon in 1950, having graduated in the top 10 percent of his class. He also was a member of the journalistic fraternity Sigma Delta Chi and the scholastic honor fraternity Phi Beta Kappa. He was active on the Daily Emerald, the university newspaper.

After graduate study at the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Wallace was recruited by the Wall Street Journal in 1953 and was assigned to Chicago, New York, London, Bonn, Germany, Beirut, Havana and Rio de Janeiro. His assignment in Havana ended with his expulsion by Fidel Castro’s police.

He joined U.S. News in 1963, with assignments mainly in Latin America and Asia, including seven years of covering the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

After Vietnam, Mr. Wallace was given the task of opening the first U.S. News bureau in Moscow, where the communists previously had denied the magazine an official presence. After three years in Moscow and an intervening tour in Japan, Mr. Wallace was assigned to open the magazine’s first bureau in Beijng, which had previously refused such recognition.

In 1983, he was called to Washington to become the magazine’s senior editor for international affairs, a desk job that was frequently punctuated by assignments in Central America. In 1974, he was awarded a special citation for foreign affairs coverage by the Overseas Press Club of America.

After retiring in 1992, Mr. Wallace was active in the Cosmos Club, where he was a longtime member of the management board and served as president in 2002. He also was active in alumni affairs at the University of Oregon and served on the Board of Visitors of the law and journalism schools.

He was an accomplished chef and frequently entertained at his Vienna home, where he also was an active gardener and amateur landscape architect. In addition, he was an avid traveler, theatergoer and museum visitor.

With his Egyptian-born wife, Haya, he had amassed a museum-quality collection of paintings, sculpture and other art, mainly from South America, China, Russia and Southeast Asia.

He is survived by his wife.